Rivlin reinvites UK royal family after reported cancellation
British Foreign Office said to have put kibosh on Israeli trip planned for fall 2017 for fear it would anger Arab allies
President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday extended a fresh invitation to the British royal family to visit Israel, after reports in the UK media said an upcoming trip to the Holy Land had been canceled.
“We would be happy to welcome a member of the royal family here in Jerusalem, especially marking 100 years since the Balfour Declaration,” the president said during a meeting with visiting Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
In March, in a meeting with UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Rivlin publicly extended an invitation to Prince Charles to visit Israel during the centennial year of the 1917 signing of the Balfour Declaration.
But The Sun tabloid reported Sunday that Charles will not visit Israel in the fall of 2017.
Though never officially confirmed by London or Jerusalem, a senior British Jewish community leader told The Times of Israel last November that plans were underway for a member of the royal family to visit Israel for the first time.
According to The Sun, the Royal Visits Committee, the branch of the Foreign Office that coordinates trips on behalf of the royal family, nixed the visit in an apparent effort “to avoid upsetting Arab nations in the region who regularly host UK Royals.”
The report said Rivlin’s invitation never reached the office of Prince Charles.
The UK Foreign Office denied a visit had ever been planned, in a statement to The Times of Israel.
“Her Majesty’s Government makes decisions on royal visits based on recommendations from the Royal Visits Committee, taking into account advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The committee never proposed a royal visit to Israel for 2017. Plans for 2018 will be announced in due course,” a spokesperson said.
While royals have visited Israel in the past, no representative of the British monarchy has ever come to the country on an official “royal tour.”
Prince Charles’s attendance at Shimon Peres’s funeral last year and the funeral of slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 did not include diplomatic meetings and are not considered official royal visits. Nor was a brief 1994 visit by his father, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, to attend a ceremony commemorating his mother, Alice of Battenberg, who is buried on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives.
Despite numerous invitations over the years, no UK government has approved such a visit to Israel since the end of the British Mandate and the establishment of the state in 1948.
Israeli officials have bristled at royals’ unwillingness to come to the Jewish state, while they appear to have no qualms about visiting authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
