The late Queen Elizabeth believed every Israeli was "either a terrorist or a son of a terrorist" and refused to allow Israeli officials into Buckingham Palace, former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin has said.

"The relationship between us [Israel] and Queen Elizabeth was a little bit difficult," Rivlin told a gala event celebrating Haifa's Technion Institute of Technology in London on Sunday night.

Rivlin served as the 10th president of Israel between 2014 and 2021, while the queen died in 2022.

The former president said the queen "believed that every one of us was either a terrorist or a son of a terrorist".

He added: "She refused to accept any Israeli official into [Buckingham] Palace, apart from international occasions".

The queen was often thought to have had a strained relationship with Israel. 

Despite her visiting more than 120 countries and travelling around a million miles during her 70 years on the throne, she never visited Israel.