Resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would have “more impact by far than anything else” on global terrorism levels, according to Bill Clinton.

The former US president said that a Middle East peace agreement would “take about half the impetus in the whole world for terror away".

Speaking at a conference in Cairo, President Clinton said that a deal could have a knock on effect on Syrian support for Hizbollah and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

During his time in office President Clinton made working towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians a priority.

He told the conference that if the current round of talks made progress it would be with a similar version of the deal discussed at Camp David with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in 2000.

He said: "They're not even pretending now that they are not basically going to go back and take the modernised version I authored in 2000 that Israel accepted.

"They blew ten years and complicated the problem demographically by not doing this in 2000. It must be done.”