Prince William visits Israel, voices horror over Holocaust
TEL AVIV: Prince William honoured Holocaust victims and met Israeli leaders yesterday as he began the first official visit by a British royal to Israel and the Palestinian territories, at a time of heightened tensions.
Prince William, 36, second in line to the British throne, wore a black skullcap as he rekindled the eternal flame and laid a wreath at Israel’s Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem as a youth choir sang.
He toured the museum on a forested hillside in Jerusalem as part of a Middle East tour that first took him to Jordan.
“Terrifying,” he said, viewing a display at the memorial’s museum of shoes taken by the Nazis from Jews at a death camp. “(I’m) trying to comprehend the scale.”
His visit comes at a sensitive time after United States President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, outraging Palestinians, sparking deadly clashes on the Gaza border.
Britain governed the region under a League of Nations mandate for almost three decades until Israel’s independence in 1948, and is still blamed by both sides for sowing the seeds of the conflict.
In Jerusalem, Prince William will visit the grave of his great grandmother, Princess Alice, who was honoured by Yad Vashem in 1993 for sheltering Jews in Greece from Nazis during World War 2.
He later met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. During the visit, which Britain described as non-political, he will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian youngsters in the occupied West Bank.