Israeli Channel 12 said on Sunday, December 31, 2023, that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will head a team working to persuade European countries to receive refugees from the Gaza Strip.

The channel indicated that Blair arrived in Tel Aviv last week, and met with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister in the War Council, Benny Gantz, in meetings that were not officially revealed.

According to the channel, the goal of this visit is to be an envoy who will actually mediate between Israeli desires “the next day” after the war on the Gaza Strip, and between the moderate Arab countries, and to study the possibility of accepting refugees from Gaza in the countries of the world.

Later, Channel 12 reported that Tony Blair's spokesman denied what was contained in the channel's report and said: "The reports that Tony Blair has anything to do with voluntary immigration are incorrect, and there was no such discussion and he does not intend to look into it either."

This comes as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich renewed his call on the Palestinians in Gaza to leave the Gaza Strip, “to make room for the Israelis who can transform the desert into prosperous valleys.”

Smotrich's statements seem to confirm widespread fears that Israel wants to expel the Palestinians from the lands on which they want to build their future state, in a repeat of the mass exodus of Palestinians that followed the declaration of Israel's establishment in 1948.

“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage immigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio. “If there were 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the discussion for the next day would be completely different.”

He added that if Gaza's 2.3 million residents who "were raised with the ambition to destroy the State of Israel" left their land, Gaza would be viewed differently in Israel.

He continued: “Most members of Israeli society will say, ‘Why not, it is a beautiful place.’ Let us turn the desert into thriving valleys, and this does not come at the expense of anyone.”

Smotrich, whose far-right Religious Zionism party enjoys the support of the Israeli settler community, made similar statements in the past, entering into a dispute with the United States, Israel's most important ally.

The Palestinians accuse the occupying state of seeking a new catastrophe “Nakba,” similar to what happened following the 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes when the establishment of Israel was declared.

Since last October 7, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, which as of Sunday left 21,822 martyrs, 56,451 wounded, massive infrastructure destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.