Austria moves away from neutrality to back Israel
V IN AN unprecedented gesture, Austria’s government flew the Israeli flag from the rooftops of the chancellery and foreign ministry on 14 May, in what chancellor Sebastian Kurz called a “sign of solidarity”.
“The terrorist attacks against Israel are to be condemned in the strongest possible terms”, Mr Kurz said. “Together we stand at Israel’s side”.
Since taking office in December 2017, Mr Kurz has moved Austrian foreign policy in a more pro-Israel direction, describing Israel’s security as a “raison d’état” in an interview with the JC in November 2018.
Though this shift has gone largely unopposed, the decision to fly the Israeli flag sparked domestic and international criticism.
Former president Heinz Fischer expressed regret about Mr Kurz’s gesture, arguing that it undermined Austria’s official neutrality.
“We know all too well that Netanyahu conducts domestic policy through foreign policy and vice-versa. As such, I was aggrieved that neutral Austria demonstrated such one-sidedness in this tragic conflict,” Mr Fischer wrote in the Wiener Zeitung.
Because of Austria’s formal neutrality, the country has long perceived itself to be a centre for international diplomacy and a bridge-builder in world affairs.
This was especially true vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the 1970s, when socialist Bruno Kreisky, himself a secular Jew, was Austrian chancellor.
Yet even then Austria was never entirely neutral. Mr Kreisky had a strong bond with and direct line to Yasser Arafat at a time when the PLO chair was an international pariah.
His relations with the Israeli Labour
Party’s leading lights — Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres — were, on the other hand, querulous and tempestuous.
When, in August 1981, two terrorists from the Abu Nidal Organisation launched an attack on Vienna’s Stadttempel,
Kreisky appeared to blame then-prime minister Menachem Begin’s “hard line” for the Palestinians’ “excesses”.
Mr Kurz’s decision to raise Israel’s flag also had immediate consequences for Austria’s foreign relations.
The next day, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif cancelled a planned visit to Vienna where Iran’s negotiators have been engaged in indirect talks with the United States over a possible nuclear deal.
Mr Zarif’s deputy, Abbas Araghchi, said it was “shocking and painful to see the flag of the occupying regime that brutally killed tens of innocent civilians, including many children, in just a few days over government offices in Vienna”.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also weighed in. “I curse the Austrian state,” he said, which “wants Muslims to pay the price for the genocide it inflicted upon the Jews”.
Austro-Turkish relations have been deteriorating for years, a situation complicated by Mr Erdoğan’s attempts to exert influence over Austria’s Turkish minority.
Supporters of Mr Erdoğan and the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves organisation were a visible part of the anti-Israel protests that took place in Vienna during the latest violent escalation between Israel and Hamas.
While opposing Mr Kurz’s flag gesture, the chair of the independent Turkish Cultural Community of Austria Birol Kilic acknowledged Israel’s right to exist and said that “under no pretext” is “any form of hostility towards Jews acceptable”.
The decision to fly the Israeli flag over the chancellery sparked criticism’ Austria has formal neutrality and sees itself as bridge builder’