Merkel: Khan al-Ahmar is an Israeli decision
Children protest outside President’s Residence • German chancellor receives honorary doctorate
German Chancellor Angela Merkel refrained from publicly criticizing Israel over its pending demolition of the illegal West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar during her two-day trip to Israel that ended Thursday.
“This is an Israeli decision,” she said at a morning event at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, during which the University of Haifa conferred upon her an honorary doctorate.
She also held a question-and-answer session with Haifa University students, during which one of them pressed her on an Army Radio report that she had threatened to cancel her trip if Israel razed the encampment of tents and shacks before her arrival.
“Well, that is absolutely false. Time and again it was claimed that we conditioned our trip on this. We never spoke about this in the government. This information came to us from Israel – that we might not travel – and that is absolutely false,” Merkel said.
Germany has been one of the European countries that have been publicly critical of Israel’s planned demolition of the shantytown. It has also attacked Israel for its continued settlement building.
Khan al-Ahmar residents appealed to her to intervene. Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the director of the NGO Jahalin Solidarity, wrote a letter to Merkel on behalf of the Khan al-Ahmar children. IDF demolition plans also include the razing of the village’s “Tyre” school built with European funding.
The children “send you an urgent message: ‘Miss Angela – please save our school!,” Godfrey-Goldstein wrote.
Some 18 elementary school children also held a small demonstration outside the President’s Residence in Jerusalem during the meeting between Merkel and President Reuven Rivlin. Border police officers placed steel gates around the children and there was a heavy officer presence around them, with police restricting access to photograph the event.
At the museum, Merkel only noted that the two countries did not see eyeto-eye on this issue.
“One can disagree on it, about the settlement policy, and I definitely have some critical remarks to make because I believe in the two-state solution, but that is not relevant here,” she said.
“We are democracies and we can exchange different political opinions, also with the prime minister, but the trip was never up for debate. I heard this shortly before the trip, and I thought thank God we are taking off in half an hour – then they will surely believe that we are coming.
“But really, sometimes its like fighting against windmills; it’s the time of fake news,” Merkel said.
Following a question about the Holocaust, Merkel stated that: “We are at an important time because those who witnessed the Nazis are passing away. We therefore have to fight to preserve this memory and need to be aware of how we preserve memory in a world where there are no longer witnesses to these crimes.”
Merkel said that Germany works to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive by teaching about it as part of its educational curriculum, including visits to concentration camps.
On the issue of Israeli Arabs in Israeli society, she said that: “It is essential to give those who are of Arab descent the understanding that they are part and parcel of the society.”
On the larger issue of gender equality in society, Merkel said that there were still many changes that needed to be made to gender roles and the structure of society in general.
“Equal rights can only become a reality if both genders accept it as the reality of the day,” Merkel said.
At the start of the event, Prof. Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa, awarded Merkel an honorary doctorate. “You have taken the mission of defending the liberal world order upon yourself and have expressed your determination both in words and actions,” said Robin. He added that the institution “shares this determination” with Merkel.
“In accepting this honorary degree from our hands, we see your acceptance of us as your partners in the critical mission to support our democracy at a particularly challenging time,” Robin continued. “We thank you for the honor you have given us as you are here with us.”
Uri Bollag and Tamar Beeri contributed to this report.