Peace Summit Commentary: Trump’s Middle East Peace Shames Federal Government – Foreign Policy



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The peace accords on the balcony of the White House clearly showed that peace in the Middle East is currently only possible against the EU and especially against Germany. The federal government completely missed the breakthrough at a Middle East conference in Warsaw. That fits the picture: Berlin is on the side of the warmongers.

The Trump administration’s peace efforts accompanied European commentators with arrogant malice, and German politicians also liked to poke fun at Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and special envoy for the Middle East. After all, he was completely inexperienced, he was not perceived as a neutral mediator in the region and therefore would have to fail like a rocket, so the unanimous judgment.

After all, creating peace in the Middle East is the task of experienced German diplomats and experts, who repeated their “honest brokers” speech until they finally believed in it.

For years, only one detail disturbed the picture that German peace experts paint the Middle East: the reality on the ground.

Because despite Germany’s concentrated experience, be it officially from the Foreign Office or in the form of countless NGOs and political foundations that are doing mischief in the Middle East, peace just didn’t want to come. The Israeli settlements were to blame for this, according to the truth set in stone by German Middle East experts. Until the West Bank is free of Jews, there can be no peace between Israel and the Gulf States, because there is apparently no more pressing problem in the region than the Jewish farmers farming somewhere between Jerusalem and Jericho.

It must have been a great offense to these peace experts that, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it was precisely this inexperienced Jared Kushner who accomplished in a very short time what had failed them for decades.

Surprised by peace: the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The decisive breakthrough in the peace negotiations came a year and a half ago at a Middle East conference in Warsaw: in addition to Kushner, Pompeo and Vice President Pence, Netanyahu and leaders of the Gulf States were also represented.

Federal Chancellor Heiko Maas, who apparently considered the trip to Warsaw superfluous, sent his Minister of State, Niels Annen, who is responsible for the Middle East among other things at the Foreign Office. During the conference, however, he identified more pressing problem areas: On Twitter, Annen dealt with the Hamburg fire department and a robbery at Eimsbüttel.

He evidently overlooked the fact that historic peace resolutions had just been launched next door. At the end of the conference, Annen even complained that the conference lost the topic: “The Warsaw conference should be about peace and security in the MENA region. In the end, it was mainly about Iran. Too simple an answer. Europe acts united and prudent “.

When Israel and the Emirates announced their intention for peace in August, Annen seemed completely surprised. That could be a step in the right direction, but it will be carefully reviewed first, he explained again on Twitter.

It would be too easy to reduce the failure of German policy in the Middle East to Niels Annen just because the Minister of State is acting so clumsily. The German government also reacted cautiously to peace treaties between the Jewish state and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

The federal government, cynically speaking, has made a great contribution to this.

On the one hand, it has repeatedly encouraged completely corrupt Palestinian leaders in their actions instead of establishing red lines. While every year on January 27 and November 9 is sworn “never again”, Berlin accepts with complete indifference the permanent anti-Semitic agitation of the Palestinian Authority. Political fundamentals are used to finance terrorist attacks against Jews with German taxpayer money without disturbing anyone in the federal government.

On the other hand, one always has a warning finger ready for Jerusalem: former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel even identified an “apartheid regime” in Israel. State Minister Annen insisted on meeting with radical Palestinian groups and BDS activists rather than perhaps looking for real Palestinian peace activists.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the Israeli government pays little attention to the peace advice of German experts, but prefers to seek peace with the United States and the Gulf States.

But Berlin also had an impact on the Gulf states: they are threatened by the highly aggressive regime in Tehran. The mullahs, however, are ahead of the Palestinians in favor of German foreign politicians: if they break the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they will be rewarded with a nuclear deal that will give them billions of dollars to continue to ignite the Middle East. .

If you send an agent to concoct a plan of attack against Reinhold Robbe, the former Bundestag defense commissioner, it is of no consequence: Annen, Gabriel, Steinmeier and Maas could not even make a public statement of solidarity with their comrade.

State Minister Annen also put a special accent here: Iran’s controlled terrorist militia Hezbollah should not be banned entirely in Germany, he demanded a year before it was banned by Interior Minister Seehofer. And with the mullahs, he celebrated 40 years of Islamist terrorism at his embassy in 2019.

German policy, along with Trump’s predecessor Obama, helped the mullahs confirm their aggressive course and, on the other hand, urged the Gulf states to rethink their hostility toward Israel.

The result could marvel yesterday on the balcony of the White House: the new alliance of those who are interested in a certainly expandable peace in the Middle East.

The federal government is currently on the other side – it is currently trying to ease an arms embargo against the mullahs’ regime, and you will soon be surprised again why it just doesn’t work with your peace plans.

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