Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair has strongly denied an Israeli media report linking him to talks last week about the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza in other countries, AFP reports.

Channel 12 claimed on Sunday that Blair, who left office in 2007 and served as a Middle East envoy charged with building up Palestinian institutions, was in Israel last week.

The news channel said he held meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and war cabinet member Benny Gantz about a mediation role after the conflict with Hamas. He could also act as a go-between with moderate Arab states about the “voluntary resettlement” of Gazans, it added.

Expelling civilians during a conflict or creating unlivable conditions which force them to leave is a war crime.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit organisation he set up in 2016, said the report was “a lie”.