Israeli president’s “specific security needs” to exempt him from UK policy that world leaders be bussed to the funeral in shared transportation.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is expected to reach Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday via private vehicle, making him one of the few international leaders who won’t be bussed by British authorities to the event.
According to a BBC report, Herzog, U.S. President Joe Biden, and French President Emmanuel Macron are the politicians deemed to be at “high risk” by British security officials, and were granted permission to travel to the funeral in their own vehicles. However, most world leaders attending the event will be bussed to Westminster Abbey in a secure convoy, a leaked document published in UK media last week revealed.
Prime Minister Liz Truss clarified after the leak that world leaders like Herzog, with “specific security requirements,” would be exempt from needing to travel in shared transportation to the event.
“HM Queen Elizabeth II was known far and wide simply as The Queen. Her passing is the end of an era. Together with the Israeli people, I grieve her loss and extend my deepest sympathies to the British people and all nations of the Commonwealth, who have lost their matriarch,” Herzog wrote on Twitter upon learning of the Queen’s death.
1,500 British military personnel have already been deployed throughout London ahead of the event, with locals reporting sightings of military helicopters circling overhead and security forces stationed on rooftops and under manholes, the BBC reported.
“It’s almost as if you combined the 2012 Olympics with the London Marathon, with all the royal family members’ weddings that we’ve seen, and converged all together as one,” security consultant Will Geddes told the Canadian Press.
Some 750,000 people are expected to take to the streets of London during the time of the funeral.
Although the scale of policing needed for the funeral is unprecedented, considering the historic nature of the event and the massive number of dignitaries expected to attend, police officials said that they were prepared to meet the challenge.
“At every event that we police in London, we are considering the threat from terrorism, the threat from crime, looking after people at the same time,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy told the BBC.
“So whilst it is a unique event we are well-versed, officers are well trained and also experienced at policing such large events.”