Britain’s Prince William yesterday traveled to the occupied West Bank, where he visited a Palestinian refugee camp after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata, the headquarters of the Palestinian government in Ramallah, where William was given a red-carpet welcome that included an honor guard and a band.
The prince and Abbas made no immediate comments to reporters.
Earlier in the day he had strolled along a trendy Tel Aviv boulevard with Israeli Eurovision song contest winner Netta Barzilai to the delight of cheering onlookers.
Photo: Pool photo via AP
However, there was no “chicken-dance,” Barzilai’s signature move performed as part of her women’s empowerment hit I’m Not Your Toy during the competition.
William on Tuesday began his visit to Israel with an emotional tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, a soccer game with Arab and Jewish youth and an introduction to Tel Aviv’s vibrant start-up scene.
The prince is the first member of the British royal family to pay an official visit to Israel. Although the trip is being billed as nonpolitical, he is meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and visiting sites at the heart of the century-old conflict.
He started off the day with a visit to Yad Vashem, where he met with two survivors who escaped Nazi Germany for the safety of Britain.
“It has been a profoundly moving experience to visit Yad Vashem today,” Prince William wrote in the memorial’s guest book. “It is almost impossible to comprehend this appalling event in history. Every name, photograph and memory recorded here is a tragic reminder of the unimaginable human cost of the Holocaust and of the immense loss suffered by the Jewish people.”
He noted with pride that his great-grandmother had been recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor Israel grants to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Princess Alice hid three members of the Cohen family in her palace in Athens during the Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II. Thanks to her efforts, the Cohen family survived and today lives in France.
The princess died in 1969, and in 1988 her remains were transported to Jerusalem. William plans to visit her grave later in the week as part of his tour of Jerusalem landmarks.
Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev, who guided the Duke of Cambridge through the museum’s exhibitions detailing Nazi Germany’s genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II, said the prince was visibly moved as he stopped to inquire about various elements of the Holocaust.
“The theme that repeated itself throughout the entire visit was his wondering of what kind of deep hatred could have driven people to commit such horrific acts,” Shalev told reporters. “He kept saying: ‘How did they get to such a place?’”
“He really identified with the victims,” he added.
The hour-and-a-half visit included a ceremony in which William placed a wreath on a concrete slab containing the ashes of Holocaust victims and a brief meeting with a pair of survivors from the Kindertransport, a rescue effort for about 12,000 children who were sent from Germany to Britain on the eve of World War II.
Henry Foner, who was fostered by a Jewish family in Swansea, Wales, and later served overseas for the British Army, said it was like a fairy tale for a refugee child like himself to meet a member of the royal family eight decades after the country rescued him.
“I’m very grateful to Britain, because it saved my life, it’s as simple as that,” 86-year-old Foner said. “It was as if he knew us, he knew the background and he made us feel so at home. It’s as if you had met a friend you hadn’t seen in a while.”
Three decades of British rule between the two world wars helped establish some of the fault lines of today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Britain’s withdrawal in 1948 led to the eventual establishment of Israel and Jordan, where William on Sunday began his five-day Middle East tour.
For the 36-year-old, second in line to the throne, it marks a high-profile visit that could burnish his international credentials.
After Yad Vashem, he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, accompanied by descendants of the Cohen family.
An Associated Press journalist was prevented from covering the meeting after Israeli security agents questioned him about his religion and ethnic background.
The prince will try to deftly dodge politics when he later visits east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed in a move not internationally recognized.
Israel considers east Jerusalem, home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, as an inseparable part of its capital.
Palestinians have claimed east Jerusalem as their future capital.
The prince presented Rivlin, an avid soccer fan, with a jersey of his favorite English Premier League team, Liverpool, and expressed how eager he was to dive into his first visit to the Holy Land.
“I’m really looking forward to getting to meet as many Israelis as possible and understand Israeli history and Israeli culture,” William said. “I’m very much looking forward to really absorbing and understanding the different issues.”
He then departed for coastal Tel Aviv to attend a soccer match of young Jewish and Arab players run by the Peres Center for Peace.
The prince scored two out of three penalty-kicks against a 13-year-old goalkeeper.
He then met the mayor of Tel Aviv and together they hit the beach, where the prince chatted up tanned volleyball players.
William wrapped up the busy day with a reception held by the British ambassador that included demonstrations by Israeli tech start-ups and was attended by Israeli celebrities, politicians and other public figures.
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