There have been rumours that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair could lead Gaza for a transitional period as part of the post-war plan proposed by Trump. Al Jazeera’s Faisal Ali reports that several figures have blasted the idea.

Husam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the Palestinian people are not “minors needing guardianship”, adding that any decisions about “Gaza or the West Bank are internal Palestinian matters to be resolved by national consensus, not imposed by outside powers”.

He added that Blair should be on trial for his role in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, not administering the Gaza Strip. “Any plan linked to Blair is an ill omen.”

Reacting to the circulating rumour, Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, said: “Decolonising Palestine means decolonising it from all its colonisers.”

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and author, said it was “classic Blair” to promote himself for such a role. “A war criminal himself, he demands a five-year appointment to run the site of Israel’s genocide on behalf of Donald Trump in the finest tradition of white settler colonial projects,” he wrote on X.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Times Radio that Blair’s record in the Middle East, which involved backing George Bush in the Iraq War in 2003, was “not one to be proud of … He does not have the confidence and trust of Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN expert for Palestine, posted: “Tony Blair? Hell no.”

And the historian and author William Dalrymple said: “Given Blair’s superb record in the Middle East, what could possibly go wrong?”