Take peace message from us to Palestine, Israel asks William
PRINCE William has been asked by Israel to deliver a 'message of peace' to Palestine when he arrives today. As part of his historic visit to both countries, he was urged to tell Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas the time ha come to solve the 'tragedy'.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin told William in Jerusalem yesterday: ‘I would like you … to send President Abbas a message of peace. A message of peace that the time has come for us to find a way to build confidence as a first step toward the understanding that we have to end the tragedy between us and those around us for more than 120 years.’
When William meets Mr Abbas in Ramallah today he will become the first royal to officially tour Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Earlier yesterday, the Duke of Cambridge was left ‘profoundly moved’ when he paid his respects to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis as he visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem. Wearing a kippah, or skull cap, the prince laid a wreath. He also met Henry Foner, who was just six when he left Berlin on the Kindertransport to Britain in 1938.
Mr Foner said it was like a ‘fairy story’ to get the chance to thank the prince for Britain’s help. The trip comes at a time of renewed tension in the area, and follows the decision by Donald Trump to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The prince was cautious in his reply to President Rivlin, saying he looked forward to ‘absorbing and understanding the different issues, the different cultures, the difference religions’. Later, he emphasised his point, saying: ‘Never has hope and reconciliation been more needed. The United Kingdom stands with you, as we work together for a peaceful and prosperous future.’ The sombre note of the day was somewhat lightened when William exchanged football chat with Mr Rivlin – a lifelong Liverpool fan who said he hoped England would get to the World Cup final.
And when the prince met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, they chatted amiably about corgis and football. On a visit to a beach in Tel Aviv, William was also greeted by a gaggle of bikini- clad women – and waved sheepishly as excited locals jostled for position.
Last night there were suggestions William had been ‘used’ by Israel. Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said Mr Rivlin had put the royal in a difficult position and should have raised matters privately. But Paul Charney, of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, said it should be ‘ commended, supported and cheered’ that Israel should ask the prince to carry an ‘olive branch’ to the next stop on his itinerary.
PRINCE William this week became the first senior member of the Royal Family to pay an official visit to Israel, a visit that some may argue is well overdue.
After all, it is 70 years since Israel achieved independence — on May 14, 1948 — and as a nation it has proved a stunning and courageous success story.
It has a vibrant democracy, a lively free press and a flourishing market economy.
Moreover, deep ties of friendship and considerable trade link Israel to Britain.
So why has this royal trip been delayed so long? Part of the reason is the other, darker side to the Israeli success story.
The Palestinians, who formed the overwhelming majority population a century ago, regard the creation of Israel as an unmitigated disaster. They say it has deprived them of their land, their freedom, and in many cases driven them into exile.
Tragic
Within Israel itself, Jews (and some Arabs) do indeed live fulfilled, democratic modern lives. The same cannot be said for the six million Palestinians forced to live in squalid conditions in Gaza and the West Bank.
Ten years ago, the then Tory leader David Cameron compared Gaza, a slither of land roughly the size of the Isle of White, to a prison camp. Conditions have worsened since.
The situation on the West Bank — comprising the territories acquired by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967 against Egypt, Jordan and Syria — is dreadful, too.
In an unequivocal breach of international law, Israeli settlers have taken much of the best agricultural land, while depriving the Palestinians of water supplies and, all too often — I have witnessed this for myself — burning their olive groves and poisoning their wells.
Of course, there are two sides to this tragic story. For many Israelis the Palestinians are little better than terrorists. And it is true that Palestinians have committed terrorist outrages, firing rockets over the border from Gaza towards Israeli towns, and launching attacks on Israelis through underground tunnels.
As far as the Palestinians are concerned, however, they are victims of a brutal occupation force that treats them with contempt.
Prince William is being forced to walk the diplomatic tightrope between these two warring communities — a big ask for even the most seasoned head of state, let alone a young man growing into his job as a future King of England.
For the harsh truth is that the timing of his visit could hardly be more sensitive, with the prospects for peace seemingly more remote than ever. Which is why I worry the Prince has, with the best of intentions, been placed in an invidious position in which the hardline Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will do his best to exploit the royal visit to give extra international legitimacy to the state of Israel.
To be fair to the Prince, he has performed with impressive dignity and warmth so far, no more so than yesterday morning when he visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Yad Vashem bears powerful witness to the epic tragedy of the massacre of six million Jews during WWII. By the end of my first visit, ten years ago, I was so moved that I was almost on my knees with emotion.
Later, William met two elderly men who had fled Germany as children some nine months before the outbreak of war and come to Britain on the famous Kindertransport.
With grace, the Prince also agreed to act as a peace ambassador, taking a message from the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, to Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, whom he meets today.
And today will be the hardest part of the trip when William comes face to face with the reality of the Palestinian situation.
This will be a challenging moment. For years, Britain has backed the so- called ‘ twostate solution’, granting a separate homeland for the Palestinians on the West Bank with a shared capital in Jerusalem.
In recent months, all hopes of that vision being realised have died because of President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That has damaged irreparably the internationally supported position that Jerusalem is a shared city.
Meanwhile, Trump has effectively given the green light to Netanyahu’s government to embark on an aggressive building programme in Palestinian areas, which further reduces the chances of any peaceful solution.
This is the backdrop to the latest, bloody events in Gaza where, over the past three months, several thousand Palestinian protesters have been shot, with more than 100 killed.
As always, there are two conflicting accounts of the bloodshed. Israel says the protesters were coordinated by the terror group Hamas and that the country had to act in its selfdefence. The Palestinians insist they were unarmed protesters who have been mercilessly gunned down.
Security
To really understand the situation, the Prince would need to do much more than make the token trip to Ramallah, the sanitised headquarters of the Palestinian authority, just north of Jerusalem.
With the appropriate security in place, he would need to travel further afield to the West Bank towns of Hebron and Bethlehem.
This ancient town, where Jesus Christ was born, is scarred by the vast security wall — constructed by Israel to annex Palestinian land inside the occupied West Bank — which winds its way through the centre of the city.
Just a little further south, Prince William would be able to see the Israeli occupation at its most uncompromising. Two weeks ago, I made a heartbreaking visit to the West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar, where 173 Bedouin shepherds live. Recently, the Israeli Supreme Court gave permission for the village to be demolished and the Bedouin to be transported to a new home next to a garbage dump in Jerusalem.
The deportation of inhabitants in an occupied territory is, I would suggest, morally questionable.
So it is that the Prince will have to walk the tightrope of seeming to acknowledge the nature of the Palestinian tragedy while somehow avoiding a fallout with his Israeli hosts.
Attack
It is a task that’s made all the more difficult by the inexplicable decision of the Foreign Office to accommodate the Prince in the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem during his stay.
Yes, all visiting heads of state and celebrities stay at the King David, but for the British this hotel has a dark significance.
At the end of the WWII, this massive building was the administrative headquarters for the British mandate in the Middle East.
On July 22, 1946, Irgun, the Jewish terrorist group led by future prime minister Menachem Begin, planted a bomb which killed 91 people, including 28 Britons.
Thirteen of these were soldiers, many of whom were young men who surely would have bravely served in the British Army during the fiveyear war against Nazi fascism.
As far as the British are concerned, the Irgun attack on the King David hotel was and remains a terrorist act. But many Israelis see it as part of the war of liberation which established national independence.
In an ideal world, Prince William should, before he leaves Israel, pay tribute to those who died at the hands of Irgun terrorists, perhaps by laying a wreath at the King David.
Inevitably, there is no mention of such an act in his itinerary — perhaps out of deference to his hosts. While I accept that we have to live in a world of realpolitik, surely history demands that he acknowledge the sacrifice of those who died at the King David in the service of his great-grandfather King George VI?