British former prime minister Tony Blair paid a brief visit to a UN school in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in his first visit to the Hamas-run enclave since being appointed Middle East Quartet envoy. "I wanted to come to hear for myself first-hand from people in Gaza, whose lives have been so badly impacted by the recent conflict," Blair said at the school in the northern town of Beit Hanun. "These are the people who need to be the focus of all our efforts for peace and progress from now on," he said, adding that he would relay what he saw to an international conference on Gaza reconstruction in Egypt on Monday. The Middle East Quartet -- the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- is due to meet on the sidelines of the conference in the Sharm el-Sheikh resort. Blair's visit coincided with that of British Development Minister Douglas Alexander, the first trip to Gaza by a British minister since the Islamists violently seized power in the enclave in June 2007.