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| Germany weighs the Hamas victory
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli president Moshe Katsav
Photo: AFP Copyright 2006
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The German government is not planning on congratulating Hamas for its landslide victory, in recent Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has a major task ahead of her. On Sunday, she travelled to the Middle East. Because Germany has been one of the Palestinian Authority’s primary financiers she has had to make clear that she will not support a government run by an organization devoted to eliminating Israel from the map. Currently, Jewish organizations are pinning their hopes on Germany as a broker in the West’s dialogue with Islam.
In her first public statement from Jerusalem, Merkel said that the German government would only accept dealing with a Hamas led government under three conditions: “if Hamas recognizes Israel’s right of existence… renounces terror…and agrees to continue in peace negotiations”.
Eckart von Klaeden, speaker of the Christian Democratic party’s foreign relations committee told the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, that “Hamas is now forced to play a constructive role” [in the Middle East peace process].
A Hamas led government will lose international aid unless it takes steps to recognize Israel’s right of existence and distances itself from terror, Von Klaeden added, otherwise “it will fail”.
But Von Klaeden said he believes that “political power could force Hamas to change”.
Cut aid?
Von Klaeden’s counterpart from the Social Democratic Party [the grand-coalition partner of the Christian Democrats], Gert Weisskirchen, told Der Spiegel that Hamas [in its current form] and its government will not receive financial aid assistance from Germany.
German member of the European Parliament, Marcus Loening, from the liberal Free Democratic Party, told Stern magazine that he will support EU action to cut aid to the Palestinians.
But Stern reported that Loening’s Green-Party and left-wing counterparts have warned against cutting financial aid.
Juergen Trettin, Green Party member and former environment minister in the Schroeder government, told Stern that “the voters chose Hamas not because of its anti-Israel rhetoric, but rather due to their social and economic plight”.
The speaker of the Green Party’s European Parliamentary group told Stern that “the EU must stick to constructive dialogue, rather than cut aid.
“Each threat of sanctions is counterproductive to the democratization process that the German government has been promoting”, so the speaker of the far left Left-Party, in the German parliament, Norman Paech.
Unreleiable partner
 we cannot tell the Palestinian people who their government should be
| Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany told Spiegel magazine that because Hamas is a terror organization “it would be difficult to believe that it could be a reliable partner, even if it were democratically elected.”
Spiegel asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to clarify the German government’s position in its relationship to the Palestinian government. In a Berliner Zeitung newspaper interview, Spiegel said that “under no circumstance should dialogue be conducted with Hamas as long as they have not distanced themselves from the eradication of Israel”.
Merkel’s Minister for State Affairs, Hildegard Mueller, told Radio Berlin Brandenburg that the Christian Democrats would not categorically refuse contact to Hamas. “Perhaps its political arm will agree to negotiations [and] recognize Israel’s right to exist…We will see what the next weeks bring”, so Mueller.
There is a fundamental difference between armed terrorist activity and the construction of a democratic state
Shimon Stein, Israel’s Ambassador to Germany | Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a Bavarian radio interview that the “federal government could imagine diverse forces ruling within the Palestinian government”. Though he does not yet see that as being feasible with the current make up of Hamas, he told Speigel magazine that “we cannot tell the Palestinian people who their government should be”.
Some analysts compare Hamas’ victory to that of the National Socialists in Germany, in 1933. Former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Salman Shoval, reminded listeners of Deutschland-Radio that the Nazi party won the most votes in a democratic election despite its “undemocratic and terroristic” nature.
Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Shimon Stein told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper that the international community must now apply pressure on the current Abbas government to disarm all militant groups, as it promised. He also pleased to Germany and the European Union to make clear that there is a “fundamental difference between armed terrorist activity and the construction of a democratic state”.
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