For 70 long years, Israelis have watched Britain’s royals jet over their heads on visits to autocratic Middle Eastern countries without stopping in the Jewish state.

Generations of Israeli presidents have extended invitations to Jerusalem, offering to show the royals the grave of Prince Phillip’s mother Alice on the Mount of Olives or the sites of Britain’s World War I victories over the Ottoman Empire.

Each time they have been quietly rebuffed on the advice of the Foreign Office, which worried about exposing the royal family to the treacherous politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of upsetting the UK’s Arab allies.

But that decades-long snub will come to an end this summer when the Duke of Cambridge touches down at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.

The shift reflects Britain’s deepening security and trade relationship with Israel as well as a broader realignment in the Middle East.

Whereas Israel was once an awkward former colony with little to offer Britain except political heartburn, today it is a dynamic high-tech economy and a regional intelligence super power.