berlin brief

Israel’s secret service is suspected to have killed a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai in January 2010. According to the Dubai police, one of the 11 members of the hit squad that allegedly were Mossad agents carried a German passport.

The berlinbrief wrote about the case on 20 February 2010.

The man known as Uri Brodsky was arrested in Poland in June under a German arrest warrant. Brodsky was then handed over to the German authorities. However, a court in Cologne, where the passport he used in the Dubai killing was issued, set him free on bail on Friday.

The court could only charge him for forgery, as spying against Germany is not a crime under Polish law.

Compared to reactions by the then UK government and the coverage the incident got in the UK, the case did not create much publicity in Germany.

Take a look at the International Herald Tribune and Haaretz.

I have been wanting to write about an interesting novelty in German-Palestinian relations for a while.

On 18 May 2010, a new type of “governmental” consultation mechanism between the Foreign Ministry and the Palestinian Authority was launched in Berlin.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad chaired the first session of a so-called “German-Palestinian Steering Committee” that was attended by their Interior, Economics, Development and Education Ministers.

In the course of the meeting the delegations agreed on a number of measures to intensify Germany’s support for the building of Palestinian state structures in the West Bank.

The meeting also had a clear political message: Germany is willing to put its relations with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank on a qualitatively new footing. The steering committee will operate just under the level of the format applied with the government of Israel (”Joint governmental consultations”).

However, it clearly resembles the meetings with Israel that have been taking place on a regular basis and in the presence of the respective heads of government since 2008.

This is how the Foreign Office describes its motivation for the initiative.

This is the article that Foreign Minister Westerwelle published in Al Quds newspaper on the day of the meeting in Berlin.

Tsipi Livni, Israel’s former Foreign Minister and the head of the Kadima party, came to Berlin last week where she met with Foreign Minister Westerwelle. Livni is touring Western capitals to fight, as she said in a speech in Berlin, the deligitimization of the Jewish State of Israel in the free world.

Ms Livni spoke at the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft (German Parliamentary Society) on 24 March 2010, at an event hosted by NAFFO (Nahost Friedens Forum/Middle East Peace Forum). (more…)

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited Berlin on 15-16 March 2010 to meet with Chancellor Merkel, Foreign Minister Westerwelle and members of the Bundestag. Hariri also particpated in a briefing hosted by Körber Foundation’s Berlin office.

Germany is taking part in the naval component of the UNIFIL mission on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Last December, however, the Bundestag only extended the mandate for the German troops for another six months. While the UN’s mandate expands until August 2010, the Bundestag restricted the German contribution to June 2010 and reduced the number of soldiers from 1200 to 800.

In June, there will have to be another vote to extend the mission. So perhaps a wise choice for Hariri to come to Berlin and ask for a continued support. (more…)

Israel’s secret service is suspected to have killed a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai last month. According to the Dubai police, one of the 11 members of the hit squad that allegedly were Mossad agents, carried a German passport.

According to Spiegel Online, it turned out last week that the passport was an authentic document issued in the city of Cologne in 2009.

The issue has not received a great deal of attention in the German public so far. But Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle requested a thorough investigation in an official statement last week. (See DW-World.de, 18 February 2010)

The German government’s special envoy to the Middle East, Ambassador Andreas Michaelis, met with the second of the Israeli Embassy in Berlin on Friday, asking whether Israel had any information on the circumstances of the killing.

Berlin’s official reaction has been cautious so far. However, the context to the reported identity theft suggests that there is more to the story: German intelligence has been playing an active role in the negotiations with Hamas over the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. They have not been succesful so far; and are perhaps even less likely to succeed under current circumstances.

In the meantime, the public prosecution authority of Cologne has started an investigation into the case.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres arrived in Berlin yesterday (25 January 2010).

A week after the joint German-Israeli government consultations with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Berlin, Peres will stay for three days in the German capital to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day with a speech in the Bundestag on Wednesday. (Follow the speech here) Peres is the first Israeli President to speak in the Bundestag since German reunification in 1990.

He will also meet with President Horst Köhler and Angela Merkel.

Take a look at the media:

Israeli president touches down in Germany for Holocaust memorial (DW-world.de, 25 January 2010).

Peres to Address Germany Parliament in Hebrew on Holocaust Day (Haaretz, 25 January 2010).

Israel-Hamas Prisoner Swop Deal: German Brokered Talks Headed for Failure (Spiegel Online International, 25 January 2010).

I found two pieces on German foreign policy in the international media yesterday that I want to draw your attention to.

The first one was in the FT by Bertrand Benoit and Daniel Dombey, entitled “German concerns threaten 9/11 trial evidence”. The authors write:

“Berlin will seek to block evidence collected by German investigators about the September 11 attacks from being used to secure the death penalty in the trial of five alleged conspirators in New York.

The stance could strain relations between chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and the Obama administration.”

Read the full text here (FT, 25 November 2009).

The second piece is by Benjamin Weinthal on Germany and Iran and was published in the Weekly Standard. Weinthal writes:

“Merkel’s new governing coalition with the pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP) might very well bring us Act II of Germany’s impotent Iran foreign policy. The FDP, the party of Germany’s new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, vehemently rejects curtailing German-Iranian trade, and during the 2002 federal election Westerwelle tolerated the late Jürgen Möllemann’s (a top FDP politician) mass-mailing of election flyers bashing former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Möllemann’s campaign strategy was widely viewed as the first public use of anti-Semitism to win over voters since the Hitler movement. (more…)

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is on his first visit to Israel. Arriving on Monday, 23 November 2009, the head of the Free Democratic Party met with Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Together with Charlotte Knobloch, the President of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, who is travelling with Westerwelle to the Middle East, he also visited Yad Vashem memorial site.

In Israel, Westerwelle is still remembered for what was seen as a weak and late reaction to antisemitic remarks by his then party colleague Jürgen Möllemann in 2002. (For more, take a look at Spiegel Online International)

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz recalled the episode on the occasion of Westewelle’s visit. (more…)

Speaking yesterday at the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting in New York, the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the speech of Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad on Wednesday, in which the Iranian President again denied the Holocaust.

In his hands, Netanyahu held a document that he had been given during a recent visit to Berlin (read the NY Times article of 27 August, 2009): the original document of a construction plan of Auschwitz concentration camp. (more…)

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Berlin today. Coming from London, where he met with PM Gordon Brown and the US envoy Geoge Mitchell (see the BBC reporting), Netanjahu will meet with President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier during his two-day visit.

The visit is part of a new joint US-European initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On top of the agenda of the talks in London and Berlin are the settlements and Iran. The Guardian reported that Israel might agree on a settlement freeze in exchange for tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme by the international community.

(more…)