Jewish State media point out that the monarch never visited the country despite her manifest interest in the situation in the Middle East
Elizabeth II traveled to more than 120 countries during her 70-year reign. The Middle East was always on her compass, but she never paid a visit to Israel. She was crowned monarch four years before the creation of the Jewish State and throughout her life she did not hesitate to visit Iran, Egypt or Jordan on different tours in which she never included Israel. The media of the Jewish State highlighted this point after the death of the queen and in newspapers such as ‘Haaretz’ they collected the words of its former director, David Landau, who in a 2012 article dedicated to this decision of the queen concluded that “she herself it is part of this nasty and petty British intrigue to deny Israel that legitimacy that it is in its power to grant or withhold: a royal visit (…) It must end the boycott ».
Ultimately, the visit never took place, although her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, her sons, Prince Edward and Prince Charles, and her grandson, Prince William, have all visited the Jewish state. The newly appointed king, Charles III, did so officially as Prince of Wales in 2020 and also took the opportunity to learn first-hand about the situation in the occupied territories.
“Why didn’t the queen travel to Israel?” is the question posed by columnist Greer Fay Cashman in ‘The Jerusalem Post’. “Initially, the British Foreign Office, fearing Arab boycotts, was thought to have advised the Queen not to visit Israel, but even after there were no longer any real fears of boycotts and oil embargoes, the queen did not come », explains the veteran journalist in an article in which she collected the visit of Elizabeth II to Jordan in 1984.
The newspaper ‘The New York Times’ collected several comments from the queen during that trip about the plight of the Palestinians and her apparent disapproval of Israeli military actions, words that felt very bad among the Jewish community in the United Kingdom. “What a depressing map!” the queen remarked when she was shown a map of the hundreds of illegal settlements set up by the Israelis in the West Bank.
Following the arrival of Charles III to the throne, Israelis are now wondering if he will become the first British king to visit Israel or if he will maintain the same unofficial boycott policy as his mother.
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