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Peres' Funeral Presents Huge Challenge for Security Conscious Israel

Security officials will face one of the most challenging events of recent years when world leaders descend on Jerusalem for Shimon Peres' funeral.
Image: Israeli presidential guards lower the national flag to half mast during a ceremony marking the death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres
Flags at the Knesset fly at half staff Wednesday following the death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres.RONEN ZVULUN / Reuters
/ Source: Reuters

Security officials will face one of the most challenging events of recent years when a host of world leaders descend on Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres on Friday.

President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are expected to attend, while Bill Clinton and the U.K.'s Prince Charles have already confirmed they will be among the mourners.

The sheer number of guests combined with Israel's tense security situation presents a daunting task for security officials — but Israel is up to the challenge, according to experts.

"They will have had time to go through every possible contingency and every possible plan with every leader attending," according to Christopher Hagon, who was personal protection officer to Britain's Queen Elizabethin the 1980s. "The Israelis will be working with the security details of every world leader who is going."

Related: World Remembers Shimon Peres, 'The Face of Israel'

Now a managing director of Incident Management Group, a Florida-based security consultancy, Hagon said that Israel's security services would be figuring out both "proactive and reactive" measures to mitigate "any form of attack" on the event.

"They would literally have started with a clean slate and amalgamated the plans of all the security details into one comprehensive plan," he said. "That has to be thought through, in the case of Israel, right through to the country's borders to mitigate the threat situation."

Israel has become a world leader in security and counter-terrorism in response to decades of violence and unrest.

"It developed a security establishment out of necessity," Professor Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow at London think tank Chatham House, told NBC News. "Without getting into who's right and who's wrong, Jerusalem is a city that’s always been tense and divided by security issues."

The country felt "vulnerable," according to Mekelberg, after a series of airliner hijackings involving Israelis in the 1960s and 70s. Two intifadas — or uprisings — in the past 30 years have further bolstered the country’s desire to boost its security capabilities, he said.

Related: Peres Was Less Peace-Maker and More 'Fox' in Arab Eyes

Over the past year, the country has seen a series of deadly stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians against Israelis. Hundreds of Palestinians have also died in violent incidents, many of whom Israel says were attackers.

Despite Israel's security credentials, Friday would present the country's biggest challenge since the funeral of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin following his assassination 1995, Mekelberg said.

Photos: Lifelong Israeli Statesman Shimon Peres Dies

Given this tense atmosphere, the threat to Peres' funeral was "very low, but still present" according to Lord Michael Williams, a distinguished visiting fellow at Chatham House.

"Edgy is the word," he said. "But Israel's record is very, very good — I would say among the best."