Erik Blumenfeld a member of the Bundestag who is president of the German-Israel Association, has called on Chancellor. Helmut Schmidt to make his long postponed visit to Israel as a demonstration of the Bann government’s rejection of oil blackmail and its support of a negotiated solution of the Middle East conflict. He also urged all Western governments and political figures to stop pressuring Israel to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Schmidt was invited to Israel in 1975 by the then Premier Yitzhak Rabin. The invitation was renewed by Premier Menachem Begin’s government in 1977. But the Chancellor has held back, saying he would go to Israel at a time when such a visit would be most appropriate to the peace efforts in the area.
Blumenfeld, who is also a member of the Parliament of Europe, said that 1980 will be a year of “special significance” for German-Israeli relations and called on the Federal Government to support Israel at every stage of the difficult peace process with Egypt.
He also urged that Israel and Egypt receive massive economic and financial support in a European framework. In that connection, he proposed legislation that would make impossible to apply the Arab boycott to trade between Israeli and European firms. “The Federal Republic should do everything it can in order to promote Israel’s trade with West Europe and at the same time encourage German firms to invest in Israel,” he said.
Blumenfeld was critical of the media in both Germany and Israel. He said inaccurate and one-sided reports were largely responsible for the deterioration of relations between the two countries. Finally, he said the Federal Republic should strongly support the preservation of Jerusalem as a united city, noting that Berlin is an example of the difficulties encountered in a divided city.
DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS ON THE MIDEAST
Meanwhile, different viewpoints on the Middle East were expressed by two members of a German delegation that just returned from Beirut where they met with PLO chief Yasir Arafat. Dieter Schinzel, a Social Democrat member of the Bundestag and the European Parliament, called on the Common Market countries to recognize the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people, to support the establishment of a Palestinian state, to condemn Israel’s settlement policy in the occupied territories and “to put on diplomatic pressure in order to create the basis for peace talks.”
Another member of the delegation, Lenelotte von Bothmer, also a Social Democrat, claimed to have gotten the impression that Arafat “recognizes Israel’s right to exist.” But none of the delegation members was able to quote Arafat directly in a way that could be interpreted as a deviation from the PLO covenant’s demand for the liquidation of the Jewish State.
The German delegation was originally announced as a Bundestag delegation with participants from all three parties in Parliament. In the end, however, it was composed only of Social Democrats.
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