Queen Elizabeth's Israel Forest

(Reuters) Gideon Long - A forest in Israel dedicated to Britain's Queen Elizabeth sparked a diplomatic spat during the early 1970s, documents released Thursday showed. The JNF wanted to dedicate a forest near Nazareth to the British Queen "as a tribute from British Jewry on the occasion of her silver wedding anniversary" in 1973, and the monarch gave her consent for the project. While Arab diplomats and newspapers were incensed, the Foreign Office explained that the forest lay within Israel's pre-1967 borders, that the Queen would not own it, and that money raised by Jews in Britain would be used to cover the cost of planting.


2004-01-02 00:00:00

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