Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is in London this week for talks with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, new Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. Until two years ago, it was widely thought that Herzog could hardly be further removed, politically and temperamentally, from his country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This, as Starmer is about to discover, is no longer the case.

Once a leader of Israel’s Labour Party and Netanyahu’s fiercest rival in the Knesset, Herzog spent the summer before Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack sounding the alarm. Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul and the wave of protests it unleashed, he warned, threatened to tear Israel apart. Herzog did everything he could to chart another course.

But although he also spent years advocating for a negotiated, two-state solution, the Israeli President has not challenged Netanyahu’s conduct during the ongoing war. Indeed, he has admitted that since the “wake-up call” of October 7, his views have become more hardline. Sources close to Herzog told me that, in his London meetings, he is pressing the same arguments Netanyahu would have made in his place. He warns that Starmer’s plan to recognise a Palestinian state later this month — unless Israel agrees to a Gaza ceasefire and a revival of two-state talks — would hand terrorism a “massive victory”. Far from advancing peace or the release of Israeli hostages, Herzog argues, it would make both less likely.

He will also be reiterating the Israeli justification for yesterday’s airstrikes on the Hamas leadership in Qatar: that the individuals targeted — who Hamas says have survived — were blocking a deal for a ceasefire that would have been acceptable to those in charge in Gaza. The sources say he is also likely to confirm the claim made by Donald Trump that Israel did not warn America about the airstrikes until it was too late to stop them.

The constitutional role of Israeli presidents is partly symbolic and ceremonial. As heads of state, they are supposed to act as unifying figures, pouring balm on Israel’s many social and religious divisions, and to be purveyors of soft power overseas. But they also decide after each election whom to ask to form a government — always a difficult task, given the near-certainty that Israel’s proportional representation system will not confer an outright majority for anyone — and must sign every piece of new legislation into law.

Moreover, unlike a British monarch, once elected for their fixed, seven-year term — Herzog’s began in 2021 — they are not required to stay silent on controversial issues. Even before opposing Netanyahu’s judicial policy, Herzog expressed dismay in 2022 that his incoming coalition was likely to include the extreme Right-winger Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now National Security Minister.

Israeli presidents are also seen as pivotal figures in the country’s relationship with Jews in the diaspora, and I’m told that the main reason for Herzog’s visit now is not to hold talks in Downing Street but instead to meet leaders of Britain’s Jewish community.

If being president means trying to be an Israeli everyman, Herzog’s disillusionment with the idea of a two-state peace reflects a broader national mood. According to recent polling, just 21% of Israelis currently think Israel and a Palestinian state could co-exist peacefully. Hence the summary I got from one of the President’s associates: “Yes, he was a long-term supporter of the two-state solution, and when he was a government minister he backed the disengagement from Gaza [in 2005]. But since October 7, he has reflected the concerns of the Israeli people, and has often spoken of the dangers of rewarding terror.”

At an emotional level, this is not hard to understand. In Tel Aviv last year, I interviewed Herzog’s wife Michal, who like the President is a former lawyer. She voiced sentiments I’ve heard from many others: that Israel was “betrayed” by the world’s reaction to the Hamas atrocities, especially the attempts to question the accounts of sexual violence, which some claim were fabricated to legitimise occupation and the alleged Gaza “genocide”. She also pointed out that every family in Israel had been directly affected by the attacks: “Everyone knows someone who was raped or murdered or taken hostage, or has close family members in the IDF.”

The difficulty for Herzog and for Israel is that governments elsewhere do not share this trauma, and are becoming increasingly resistant to accepting it as a basis for postponing moves towards peace. According to an Israeli foreign ministry statement, he will also tell Starmer that the free world must not “cave in to pressure from extremist groups” in determining its policy. This message, delivered to a prime minister who has just proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, will not be palatable.

Herzog, say those close to him, wants to stress how much the UK and Israel have in common. It is possible that his visit will make it harder, rather than easier, to advance that argument.

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David Rose is UnHerd‘s Investigations Editor.

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