Prince William’s planned visit to Israel this year will break decades of precedent in which repeated invitations to visit the Jewish state have been quietly rejected.
Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president and largely ceremonial head of state, extended the invitation to the royal family during a meeting with Boris Johnson in Jerusalem a year ago.
Whitehall sources told The Times that the invitation would be accepted on the advice of Downing Street with guidance from the Foreign Office.
Israel wanted the visit to take place last year, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration expressing British backing for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, came to London in November for private events marking the centenary on Theresa May’s invitation.
Putting the visit off until this year robs it of the symbolism but also sidesteps the controversy of Britain’s role in Israel’s creation and its subsequent occupation of Palestinian land. This year marks 70 years since the creation of modern Israel.
Kensington Palace said that the Duke would also visit the Palestinian territories and Jordan, balancing out regional sensitivities and ensuring that he is able to visit all the key sites of the Holy Land.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in Jerusalem’s Old City, an area annexed by Israel but regarded as occupied territory in international law. Bethlehem lies in the occupied West Bank in an area under the control of the Palestinian authority.
Other likely sites for the royal visit include Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, and the Western Wall, also in Jerusalem’s Old City. He is unlikely to visit Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by the UK.
A raft of past invitations have gone unanswered, despite a state visit to Britain in 1997 by Israel’s then president, Ezer Weizman.
Prince Philip has been to Israel once in 1994 to visit the grave of his mother, who was given the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” for sheltering Jews in Nazi-occupied Greece. Buckingham Palace was swift to note that the visit was in a private capacity.
Prince Charles has been to Israel twice, to attend the funerals of the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the former president, Shimon Peres.
The government’s refusal to sanction a visit has long been seen as a rebuke of Israeli policy towards Palestinians and a nod to important regional allies such as Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, however, has been changing posture on the Palestinian issue over the past year and is likely to have dropped any objections to a visit as Riyadh seeks to galvanise global and regional opposition to Iran.
On Tuesday Downing Street announced that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would visit the UK next week.
