Possible Peacekeeping Role in Israel Still Divides Germany
July 28, 2006
Despite the strong opinions of Jewish organizations in the country against German participation in a peacekeeping contingent, members of the power-sharing government say the country cannot turn its back on its international responsibilities.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was keeping her options open.
"This question is not one we have to answer for the time being," Merkel said in Der Tagesspiegel newspaper on Thursday. "We should do everything we can to try to secure a ceasefire as quickly as possible."
While the international conference in Rome on Wednesday made no progress on the issue of a multinational force to be based in Israel and southern Lebanon, Germany's main Jewish group said it would be deeply unhappy if German soldiers were involved.
"Many survivors of the Holocaust are still living in Israel and I don't know how they would react if German troops had to act against an Israeli soldier who was defending his country," Stephan Kramer, the Secretary-general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told rbb-Inforadio.
"What would happen if a German soldier deployed in that region had to shoot at an Israeli soldier?" he asked.
Wolfgang Gerhardt, the foreign policy spokesman of the opposition Free Democrats (FDP), also said he saw enormous obstacles to sending German soldiers to the Middle East.
"The dramatic historical precedent of the extermination of the Jews makes any role as an intermediary very difficult for German soldiers," Gerhardt said.
The premier of Bavaria and head of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), Edmund Stoiber, said he was "very skeptical" about a possible German participation in the peacekeeping force. In Brussels in Thursday, Stoiber said the mandate for a peacekeeping force was still vague, adding that historical reasons also gave him cause for concern.
Duty to act
But German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says the country's Nazi past, and the extermination of six million Jews, meant it had a duty to act.
"If the mandate is clear, if it has realistic aims and if the risk for our soldiers is limited, then I think we have to consider it," Steinmeier said in the mass-market Bild newspaper on Thursday, adding that he hoped the conditions to create such a force would be in place as soon as possible.
One of his predecessors as foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, who held the post from 1992 to 1998, agreed.
"If the Israeli side expressly asks for such an intervention... it would be inappropriate to refuse this request," Kinkel said.
A former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, suggested that German soldiers could play a limited role.
"It would be good if they were employed as observers on Israeli borders. But I don't think they should be in combat units."
German peacekeepers are currently helping to police this weekend's historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo while German soldiers are also involved in the international forces in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia-Hercegovina.