Exclusive: Israeli president to meet PM Starmer on Wednesday evening
Exclusive: Israeli president to meet PM Starmer on Wednesday evening
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog for talks on Wednesday evening, Middle East Eye understands.
Herzog is understood to be arriving in London on Tuesday despite widespread anger over the meeting, due to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Sources close to the Labour Party told MEE that the meeting will take place in Number 10 on Wednesday evening, having been brought forward from Thursday.
MEE has contacted Downing Street for comment.
The news of the now earlier meeting comes as an arrest warrant is being sought for Herzog ahead of his planned trip to London.
News of the visit has sparked outrage, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Herzog himself has backed the genocide and said civilians in Gaza bear responsibility for the attacks on 7 October.
Pro-Palestine campaign group Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) has instructed a legal team to apply for an arrest warrant to be issued for Herzog on "charges of aiding, abetting or procuring direct and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects".
The new Green Party leader Zack Polanski told MEE that Herzog must be arrested when he arrives in Britain, describing the president's visit as a "brutal insult" to those mourning the "innocent lost" in Gaza.
Herzog has backed Israel's military operations in Gaza. In October 2023 he claimed that all Palestinians in Gaza were "unequivocally" responsible for the 7 October Hamas attack on southern Israel.
"It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved," he said in remarks that South Africa submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during its genocide case against Israel.
Polanski told MEE: "Israel are engaging in an ongoing genocide. Everyone involved should be arrested and charged for war crimes."
