Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein has hit out at an ongoing legislative push to suspend three Arab members of parliament, a move that could result in the resignation of the other 10 Arab MKs.

Mr Edelstein, on a trip to London this week to meet British MPs and Foreign Office ministers, said: “It would be terrible not to have Arab representatives in the Knesset,” although he insisted that it is “not going to happen, ever”.

The “Suspension Bill” was initiated after the three members of the Balad Arab nationalist party last month met the relatives of Palestinians who had been killed while attacking Israelis.

Mr Edelstein said: “I wish this legislation were not there. I am saying that now and I said it openly in the Knesset.”

He pointed to growing ideological extremism within the Israeli parliament – on both Jewish and Arab sides - as one of the reasons for the bill. “There is more and more dragging of the centre towards the extreme right and the extreme left.” He added: “Fortunately it’s not happening.”

However, the Knesset Speaker, who lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, said: “If we have more common places on our society… we wouldn’t have MKs shaking hands with those who openly supported terrorists and called them martyrs.

“To say that these three Balad MKs represent their population is to offend the Arab population. They represent a small minority of voters.”

Mr Edelstein explained how he personally intervened in his capacity as Speaker to try to keep the Arab Knesset members – who had apparently begun to boycott Knesset sessions – attending parliament.

He said: “The president of German Bundestag came to speak at the plenary session, as one of the first guests of this Knesset. But all of a sudden, right in front of him I see an empty space. All 13 Arab MKs weren’t there. Like I said, this is dragging... So I said to them, where are you going? What’s happening to you? And most of them started appearing again.”

However, Mr Edelstein criticised the Arab MKs for failing to condemn extremism among their supporters. He said: “My answer to these MKs, however, is: if I can say to my constituents – and it’s a pretty hard, right-wing constituency – the things I say in the British Parliament about negotiations, co-operation and future peace, and very harsh things about cases of Jewish extremists – it wouldn’t hurt the members of the United Arab List for them to appear and say, we don’t think terrorists are martyrs, probably then I would say we don’t need any legislation.”