Germany Hints It Cannot Provide Additional Assistance for Israel

In a move apparently intended to discourage further Israeli requests for assistance, the German government has published a detailed list of foreign aid commitments made to the Jewish state during the Persian Gulf War.

In response to a parliamentary question, Vice Foreign Minister Helmut Schaefer said Bonn would honor promises to buy or build over 1 billion marks ($570 million) of military equipment for Israel.

Topping the list are two advanced submarines currently being built in a shipyard in Kiel. Bonn has also provided Israel with Patriot anti-missile systems and sophisticated equipment to detect chemical and biological weapons.

All of these projects were approved during the Gulf war, when both the government and the German public was shocked by the Iraqi attacks against Israel.

The timing of the government’s disclosure of assistance is significant, insofar as Israel is currently attempting to line up political support for some $2 billion in loans it is seeking from Germany to help absorb Soviet Jewish immigrants.

The government has repeatedly stated that it never promised to provide Israel with such assistance.

But Israeli officials say that both Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher responded positively when Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy requested such assistance in March.

The Israeli request was partly based on the argument that since the former East German regime never paid reparations to victims of the Holocaust, united Germany should take upon itself the moral responsibility of rectifying the situation by providing aid desperately needed for immigrant absorption.

But German officials have been negotiating separately on the reparations issue with the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and apparently have no intention of making a separate deal with Israel.

DECREASING SYMPATHY FOR ISRAEL

When Levy visited Germany in March, the country was still swept by a wave of sympathy for the Jewish state, and many were publicly criticizing the extensive involvement of German companies in Iraq’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs.

But since then, a lot has changed. Israel has again assumed its traditional image as “bad guy” in the Arab-Israeli conflict and is being increasingly criticized here for its policies in the administered territories.

At the same time, the German treasury has been burdened by the need to provide economic subsidies to the area of the former East Germany in far greater dimensions than had been imagined. On top of that, the decision to move the seat of the federal government to Berlin is expected to cost some 100 billion marks ($57 billion) over the next few years.

Faced with these pressures, Germany has no alternative but to reject the Israeli request for further assistance, government sources say. By listing aid commitments made during the Gulf war, the government in effect is signaling Israel that it feels it has done enough.