PM threatens to cancel German FM meeting over NGOs
Construction in W. Bank cited as issue
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened on Monday to cancel his meeting with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, over his plans to meet with Israeli left-wing organizations such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, according to a report on Channel 2.
The Prime Minister’s Office would not comment on the matter, but it sent out Netanyahu’s schedule for Tuesday without mentioning the meeting.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely congratulated Netanyahu for setting a redline on the matter.
Gabriel arrived in Israel on Monday and is set to meet with President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah.
He is expected to state his support for a two-state solution in both of those meetings.
“With respect to the Middle East conflict, our solidarity with Israel also means working to ensure that Israel and Palestine can live side by side in dignity and peace,” Gabriel said in a statement released as he departed for the region.
“Only a two-state solution will be sustainable,” he said.
Gabriel’s visit, his first since becoming foreign minister in January, comes as German concerns about Israeli settlement building have dragged ties to their lowest point in years.
German governments have made strong relations with Israel a top priority ever since World War II, going to great lengths to make amends for the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.
“We do not believe that the current situation is sustainable,” Schaefer said. “We think it’s necessary to make another attempt to revive talks and negotiations in the framework of the Middle East process.”
Lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses a long-term threat to Israel, Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Sunday.
He said relations between the two countries remained deep and important, but also cited “grave differences of opinion.”
“All those who care deeply about Israel... are sad, even depressed, about how entrenched everything is, and how much Israel is relying on its military-police superiority and is not developing any perspectives for the situation,” he said.
Roettgen said Israel was profiting from tensions elsewhere in the region, which had shifted the focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and infighting among
Palestinians.
That had short-term security advantages, but the underlying situation was growing worse and more negative, he said, adding, “That is a real threat for Israel in the longer term.”
Merkel in March canceled a summit with Netanyahu that was due to occur in Jerusalem in May, and said she was worried that Israel’s building in the West Bank was undermining progress toward a two-state solution.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been frozen since 2014 and settlements are one of the most heated issues. Palestinians want the West Bank and east Jerusalem for their own state, along with the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, after his arrival, Gabriel visited Yad Vashem and wrote in its guest book. He said, “Today, Israel remembers those who died in the Shoah, six million Jews who were murdered by the National Socialists in an unparalleled crime against humanity.
“On this occasion I want to reiterate in no uncertain terms the historic responsibility that Germany bears for the Holocaust and the crimes of the Second World War and that guides our conduct today. For our generation it is both a warning and an obligation – to take a stand against antisemitism and for human dignity, tolerance and intercultural understanding. That is the task for which we will one day be called to account.
“Here in Israel today, I bow my head in silence before the unfathomable depths, the almost inconceivable betrayal of all civilized values that was the Shoah, and before the country that has, despite this, extended its hand to us Germans.” •