On Nov. 14, Zvi Heifetz, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, returned to his country at the end of his tour. While in London he had hoped to persuade Prince Charles, the future king, to visit Israel. To pave the way for such a visit the ambassador invited Sir Michael Peat, the prince’s principal private secretary, and his deputy, Clive Alderton, to Israel for a four-day visit as guests of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament. The ambassador would have been delighted with the initial response of Sir Michael in an email:
“The invitation is hugely appreciated and Clive and I would love to come.”
But Clarence House, the London residence of Prince Charles, had a change of mind, and perhaps had time to explore the subject of the royal family and Israel in greater depth. Just before the ambassador left London, and, presumably, after a stupid mistake, he received a copy of an e-mail from Clive Alderton to Sir Michael saying:
“Safe to assume that there is no chance of this visit ever actually happening? Acceptance would make it hard to avoid the many ways in which Israel would want HRH to help burnish its international image.”
These two e-mails found their way into The Jewish Chronicle. In a leading article the paper’s editor, David Rowan, wrote that the e-mails: “raise serious questions about both the culture within his office and assumptions that senior staff seem to hold about the Jewish state.”
He thought the emails: “are even more troubling when one considers that, just two weeks ago, the prince’s mother hosted a glittering state banquet for Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, attended by the senior British royals.” He added: “Would it not be diplomatic for the royal household to signal now that, despite suspicions to the contrary, there really is no political, ideological or (dare we say) faith-related barrier to their organizing the first official royal trip to Israel?”
I have been following the matter of the lack of royal visits to Israel for many years, and it is a sensitive subject for Zionists and successive Israeli governments. In 1994 the queen’s husband, Prince Philip, arrived in Tel Aviv to make a private visit to Israel. The purpose of his trip was to visit the grave of his mother, Princess Alice, a devout Orthodox Christian, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. He was the first member of the British royal family to visit Israel since the State of Israel was founded in May 1948. According to The Jewish Chronicle (Nov. 4, 1994):
“Meeting Prince Philip off a plane of the queen’s flight ... the Education Minister, Professor Amnon Rubenstein, joked: ‘There haven’t been so many Union Jacks in this part of the world since the end of the British Mandate’”.
Princess Alice was reburied in the grounds of St Mary Magdalene, Jerusalem in 1988, and at that time Anglo-Israel relations were at such a low ebb that no member of the royal family was able to attend.
Prince Charles attended the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin and the Duke of Wessex has made a private to Haifa.
Since 1948 the royal family has made some 60 official visits to the Arab states. The queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have gone out of their way to build up a good rapport with Arab royal families. Members of the Jordanian royal family are frequent visitors to London. Prince Charles has established a reputation as a thoughtful and constructive speaker on the relationship between the Western world and the Islamic world, and is a regular visitor to the Gulf states especially.
Who would really decide if an official visit to Israel is now appropriate? The answer, of course, is that with a constitutional monarchy it is a matter for political decision by the elected government, and in the hands of the British Foreign Office. I am sure, in practice, the views of the queen and her palace advisers would be listened to first before any decision is reached. The queen, now 81, who together with other members of the royal family has many direct and personal links with the armed forces, will be mindful that the Jewish revolt in the last years of the mandate left deep scars. Old soldiers recall the kidnapping and then murder of two British sergeants in 1947, and the booby-trapping of their bodies by an Irgun terrorist squad. This prompted anti-Semitic riots in some British cities and incensed their former comrades.
A much younger generation of diplomats in the Foreign Office will be well aware of the hostility to Israel that Ariel Sharon’s government helped create, and the unpopularity of Israel’s bombing of the Lebanon in 2006. I am not expecting a royal visit to Israel.
