The Cambridge University Palestine Society (PalSoc) is planning to host a demonstration against Yiftah Curiel, the head spokesman for the Israeli embassy, when he arrives to speak at the Union on Monday night.

The executive committee is inviting members to bring “placards, banners and any other noise-making equipment (tin pans and spoons, megaphones, whistles etc.)” The planned protest, mirroring the reaction to Curiel’s appearance at a similar event at UCL on Tuesday, follows PalSoc’s release of a statement expressing “outrage” at the Union’s decision “to give the stage solely to a representative of the Israeli government, rather than host a proper debate.” 

The details of the speaker event were not initially released by the Union, prompting PalSoc to criticise in an email to members seen by Varsity what they saw as “an attempt to minimise the opportunity for organised protest”. This follows the protest held against Daniel Taub, the Israeli Ambassador, who appeared in Cambridge in October last year.

Monday’s appearance from Curiel, which will follow a speaker’s event with Professor Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority’s Representative to the United Kingdom, was initially planned to be a single event featuring both men. However, the email goes on to describe how that proposed event was “prematurely suspended due to external pressure faced by the Union”.

This is disputed by the Union, which claims that “over the course of our negotiations with various potential speakers to represent both sides, PalSoc withdrew their support.”

A statement from the Union Press Office in response to the Palestinian Society’s grievances reads: “[the] two events are the result of months of negotiation with representatives from the Palestinian and Israeli Embassies and were both hosted in the interests of balance and fairness in regard to the sensitive subject matter involved.”

The Union claims that it had attempted to organise “a collaborative event for Michaelmas 2015... to feature both a Palestinian and Israeli representative, thus giving members an opportunity to hear both sides of the story.”

While the Union was refused to comment in too much detail “in order to avoid compromising agreements reached in private between two Embassies and the Union”,  it was keen to “clarify that multiple options for the configuration of these events were considered and suggested.”

Union Press Officers Matteo Violet-Vianello and Timothy Adelani further explained that “the Palestinian Society were consulted in advance of these negotiations, and were asked to be involved in these events as joint partners as a gesture of good faith ... as a neutral party, the Union organised the events that were agreeable to both speakers’ representatives. Both Embassies made requests regarding the format of any potential events, which were respected.”

The Israel-Palestine conflict has long been prominent in Cambridge debate. In October last year, the Union passed a motion that described Israel as a “rogue state”, with 51 percent of attendees voting for the proposition. Several open letters signed by Cambridge academics, on both sides of the boycott debate, have been released over the last year.

In October last year, Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, was greeted by around 50 protesters in the wake of Operation Protective Edge, the Israel Defence Forces’ military action in Gaza. At the time, PalSoc told members that “the Cambridge University Palestine Society considers the visit of such [Israeli] speakers a tacit endorsement of war crimes committed by their government, and a distasteful decision given the current situation in the West Bank.

“As students of Cambridge University, we should stop such individuals pertaining to an apartheid government from using our university to whitewash their crimes, and be resilient against providing them with a platform to do so.”