Tony Blair landed in Israel on Monday for his first visit as an international envoy, hoping to help end 60 years of peacemaking failure since Britain handed Palestine to Jews and Arabs who are still fighting over it.

“Mission Impossible” is what the skeptics have, inevitably, already dubbed the newly retired British prime minister’s mandate as the envoy for the four-power Quartet — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

But Blair has said he has hopes of helping to solve a critical global problem.

His spokesman described a meeting in Amman with Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdelelah al-Khatib as “positive” before Blair flew on to Tel Aviv for meetings later in Jerusalem.

Khatib and his Egyptian counterpart are due to visit Israel on Wednesday for a landmark visit to promote an Arab League peace proposal.

Blair is not expected to say much in public. He comes “very much in listening mode”, his spokesman said.

He will meet Israel’s foreign and defence ministers as well as a top American diplomat in Jerusalem on Monday before talks on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem and with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in nearby Ramallah.

Although Blair spoke last week of his hopes of progress, a jaded sense of deja vu pervades both Israeli and Palestinian society — those few Israeli and Palestinian newspapers that devoted space to his arrival betrayed no optimism about it.

Blair was asked by the Quartet simply to present by September an initial plan for building ruling institutions needed to establish a viable Palestinian state alongside

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