Ed Miliband
Photo: EPA
British opposition leader Ed Miliband due to arrive in Israel
Miliband, Labor leader and first party's first Jewish leader, will meet Israeli, Palestinian leaders, hold Q&A session at Hebrew University, and visit Yad Vashem.
British opposition leader and head of the Labor Party Ed Miliband was due to arrive in Israel on Thursday, for a three-day trip. Miliband is the first Jewish leader of the party.
During his visit, Miliband was scheduled to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. On the Israeli side, Miliband will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with opposition and Labor leader Isaac Herzog.
He is also expected to deliver a lecture and hold a Q&A session with Hebrew University students, as well as visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Finally, Miliband also planned to visit relatives living in a kibbutz in northern Israel.
This is considered to be one of Miliband's first major foreign trips since being elected opposition leader in September of 2010.
Miliband, the first Jewish leader of the British Labour party, is viewed by some as having a chance of succeeding British Prime Minister David Cameron in the next general elections, scheduled for May 2015.
His mother is a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust thanks to being protected by Poles, while his father, of Polish-Jewish origins, fled with his parents to England during World War II.
At an event last month by the British organization Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitic attacks on British Jews, Miliband stressed the importance of supporting Israel, the country that "provided sanctuary" to his grandmother after the Holocaust, according to The Jewish Chronicle.
At the same event, the opposition leader said he considered himself "a supporter of Israel" but that "it doesn't mean I support everything Israel's government does."
