German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who started Monday night a 24-hour visit to Israel, said for almost 50 years her country has worked “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel to secure its future.
She also said “part and parcel” of a secure future ‘’is the two-state solution, a Jewish state of Israel living alongside a Palestinian state’’.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted Merkel in Jerusalem at a brief press conference. The two were scheduled to meet at the Prime Minister’s Residence afterward for a working dinner.
“We have come here with almost the whole of our new government and we wanted to show you in this way that this is indeed a very strong friendship,” Merkel said in German.
She said that her government had been “working assiduously” for a two-state solution and that she herself had been championing the idea. “We want to see progress,” she added. said shortly after arriving for a 24-hour visit along with almost her entire cabinet.
She said that she came with 16 members of her government “to show you in this way that this is indeed a very strong friendship, and a friendship we want to develop further.”
Netanyahu, who in an interview for German television station ZDF on Sunday called Merkel and her government “great friends of Israel,” declared: “I can assure you, Angela, that the people of Israel want peace.
“The people of Israel want peace, they want a real peace, they want a peace that ends the conflict that finally gets the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state and one in which we have the necessary means of security to defend ourselves against any possible contingency in this turbulent Middle East,” he said.
Merkel’s visit will include the largest bilateral government consultations in Israel’s history.
The visit officially kicks off the preparations for next year’s celebration of 50 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations.
The two governments will meet in a joint session on Tuesday, following bilateral meetings between each of the visiting German ministers with their Israeli counterparts.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the close relations between Israel and Germany had contributed significantly to Israel’s ties with the EU.
His German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that he was proud of what the two states had achieved in their relationship, while not forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust.
Cooperation agreements are due to be signed on security, foreign relations, economics and trade, justice, energy, environmental protection, agriculture, transportation, education (including technological education), science and research and development, culture and sports, interior, health, increasing mutual financing for cancer research, social welfare services, projects regarding senior citizens, advancing projects in developing countries, and preservation of the White City of Tel Aviv as the largest collection in the world of Bauhaus architecture.