King Charles to visit Israel
Preparations are underway for newly-crowned King Charles of England to become the first British sovereign to visit the Holy Land, British media reported on Sunday.
“The preparation has been done by his team to pave the way for this visit,” said Conservative peer Lord Polak according to the Daily Mail. “There is no doubt that Charles will be the one to break this pattern,” he said.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog with Prince Charles in the United Kingdom, Nov. 22, 2021. Photo by Koby Gideon/GPO.
Lord Polak served as director of Conservative Friends of Israel for more than 25 years.
Charles is also likely to visit the Palestinian territories in an effort to avoid causing controversy, the British tabloid reported.
He travelled to Israel in a private capacity three times before he took the throne.
Prince William made an official trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2018.
Charles’s mother, Elizabeth II, never came to Israel during her 70-year reign due to concern it would upset the Arab world.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has been personally involved in lobbying the king to visit, but the threat of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza was a “stumbling block” to setting a date, the paper reported.
Charles is already set to visit Kenya later this year, the country where his mother was notified she became queen after the death of her father, Charles VI, in 1952.
JNS
King Charles’s grandmother, on his father’s side, is buried in Jerusalem.
Charles has always had a mind of his own. It will be interesting to see what comes of it,