William a hit in Mideast
TALKING OF THE FUTURE: FOCUS ON MEETING YOUNG ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS
Britain didn’t explain why it changed the policy of no royal visits before peace.
Britain’s Prince William strolled along a trendy Tel Aviv boulevard with Israeli Eurovision song contest winner Netta Barzilai yesterday to the delight of cheering onlookers.
But there was no “chicken-dance”, Barzilai’s signature move performed as part of her women’s empowerment hit, I’m Not Your Toy, during the 2018 song-fest.
William, second in line to the throne, is on the first official visit by a British royal to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
He later travelled to the occupied West Bank and met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata, the headquarters of the Palestinian government in Ramallah, where William was given a red carpet welcome that included an honour guard and a band.
In Tel Aviv, William walked with the purple-braided singer along Rothschild Boulevard. William and Barzilai chatted at a kiosk while female tourists standing among a cheering crowd behind barriers shouted “we love William” at the 36-year-old prince, who smiled in response.
The day before he had focused in his first engagements on honouring the memory of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
On Tuesday, William, wearing a button-down shirt and long trousers, walked along the Tel Aviv shore as beachgoers snapped photographs.
After meeting Barzilai, he chatted with environmental activists at Beit Ha’ir, a Tel Aviv museum, where he poked fun at his beach attire a day earlier. “It was a little bit tricky: I turned up like this on the beach. I was like, really?”
Asked if he should have worn swimwear, William said: “No. There’s too many cameras around . ... I’ll get beach-ready for Israel the next time.”
In the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, he is to meet Palestinian youngsters after seeing Abbas. William met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Unlike William, Netanyahu did perform the chicken dance when he met Barzilai in May. The video, which he posted on his social media pages, went viral.
William’s trip, which ends today with visits to holy sites, is at the behest of the British government.
It had been British policy not to make an official royal visit until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was resolved and officials have given no explanation for the change in policy, other than saying the time was right for the visit, during which William hoped to shine a spotlight on the young generation of Israelis and Palestinians and their hopes for the future. – Reuters