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| The Prince of Wales shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the CO21 conference |
When Prince Charles threaded through the hallways of last week’s climate change conference in Paris, he swapped ideas with world leaders on how to confront the dangers of a warming planet.
But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had something else on his mind. During a brief meeting, he invited the Prince of Wales to pay an official visit to Israel.
Mr Netanyahu’s offer - like dozens of others extended by Israeli leaders to the Royal family - is unlikely to be taken up.
In the 67 years since Israel was founded in territory once controlled by Britain, no member of the Royal family has ever visited in an official capacity. While Prince Charles and others have occasionally set foot in Israel, Buckingham Palace and the British Government have been at pains to stress they were personal visits and not official ones.
The rejected invitations are a source of deep frustration for Israel, especially as the Royal family has made high-profile visits to authoritarian regional neighbours like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as Charles did in February.
“We’re the only democracy in the Middle East and so you ask why do the Royals go to the Arab dictatorships around us but they don’t come here?” said one Israeli official. » | Raf Sanchez, Jerusalem, and Gordon Rayner | Saturday, December 5, 2015
