Speech
by Joschka Fischer
Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
on receiving an honorary doctorate
from the University of Haifa
Haifa/Israel,
29 May 2002

Professor Hayuth,
Professor Ben-Ze'ev,
Mr. Mayor,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Students,

Today is quite an unusual day for me.
It is not the first time that I speak in a university or to students and professors. But it is the first time that I am officially part of a university community and this in a way that does me such honour. For this and for the warm welcome a heartfelt "Thank You", "Toda Rada", to the University of Haifa and to all its faculty and students.

This is a special honour for me because I am accepting this honorary degree - which our Federal President Johannes Rau was the first German to receive - not only personally but also as German Foreign Minister.

As a German born not long after the defeat of the Nazi dictatorship and in the founding year of the State of Israel, I was almost born into the post-war debate on German guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust. The "man in the glass cage", Eichmann in Jerusalem, is one of those early political memories that stay with me to this day.

Germany, my country, cannot separate itself from its history, cannot leave it behind, cannot forget it. It is our history. We have no other. And responsibility for Auschwitz, for the genocide against German and European Jews, that horrific crime against humanity, is forever part of our history. German democracy has accepted this historical and moral responsibility. The very special relationship between democratic Germany and the State of Israel, which began with Konrad Adenauer and David Ben Gurion, is based on this.

The people of Israel can trust in democratic Germany as a reliable friend and partner, both today and in the future. That is not a question of changing political conditions. It is and will be a permanent and solid feature of German policy.

Through this unwavering solidarity of democratic Germany with Israel, trust and sometimes even friendship could develop between the survivors and the children of the victims on one side and the children of the perpetrators on the other side. I take this honorary degree of your university today as an expression of this trust, and for that, too, I am deeply grateful.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The responsibility for our history does not vanish or disappear. I am ashamed when Jewish Germans have the feeling that they are left alone again. And I am even more ashamed when German Jews today seriously discuss whether is was not a mistake to stay and live in Germany.

This must never happen again, not in democratic Germany. Therefore, the question whether Jews are safe and feel "at home" in Germany is the crucial question of credibility for our German democracy. A question which we Germans have to ask ourselves time and again.

The sensibility for the feelings and the sensitivities of the survivors, their children and grandchildren, has nothing to do with establishing so-called "taboos". This sensibility is simply our obligation - and up to now it has been the firm and accepted basis for all democrats in my country.

I sometimes wonder what a wonderful country Germany - my Germany - would be if, for example, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber and the many other German Jews who were forced to flee from the Nazis or were deported and murdered by them, had been able to end their lives in peace as respected citizens of Germany?

Our own history teaches us: all forms of anti-Semitism have to be met with our determined opposition.

What Hitler and the Nazis did to German Jews, they did first and foremost to Germans, Germans of the Jewish faith. The Holocaust monument in Berlin will also be a symbol of this tremendous loss which is still so painfully felt in my country and its culture.

The response to the darkest chapter in our history can only be a positive one, in a double sense: a growing Jewish community in Germany which can live safely and freely and an Israel whose people can live safely, free from terror and violence. An Israel recognized and accepted by all its neighbours in the region and side by side with a democratic Palestinian state. This is the vision that President Bush set out in his important speech of April 4. This is what I am working and arguing for - and I will continue to do so, both in domestic and foreign policy.

However, today is not only a special, but also a difficult day for me because - having received academic honours previously unknown to me - I now have to find the right words for a problem which is not at all academic. For a problem which stirs the emotions of every single person in this hall and beyond: the quest for lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians and in the whole Middle East.

We Germans not only have a historical obligation here but also, as Germans and Europeans, our own security interests. We are direct neighbours of the Middle East. War and peace in this region affect us directly, and for that reason we also feel compelled to help the peace process in your region for very egoistical reasons.

We regard the current situation with great concern. For many months now, the hope, indeed the expectation, of a substantial peace settlement has given way to new rounds of terror and violence. This week a year ago I was witness to the horrific attack on the "Dolphinarium" during my visit to Tel Aviv. I witnessed the horror and the anger provoked here in Israel by this carefully calculated terror. I do not know how many times since then I have seen television images of new attacks - also here in Haifa only a few weeks ago. Images of horror and grief and of desperate relatives - and then, time and again, images of innocent victims also on the Palestinian side.

I am now back in Israel for the fifth time since that tragic day one year ago, and never before has it seemed so urgent to do all we can to help politics and a negotiated peace reclaim their rightful place.

Our firm solidarity is with the Israeli people who built up this great country. We strongly support their deep wish for a life without war and without fear. When it comes to Israel's existence there can never be any equidistance for us Germans. Israel's right to exist is inviolable.

For that very reason we actively support the right also of the Palestinians to live in dignity and in a state of their own. We regard this as the best guarantee for Israel's lasting security.

What will the road to such a peace settlement look like? How can we move closer to this goal? One thing seems to me to be more certain than ever: there is no viable military solution. Only a political agreement can bring and guarantee lasting security and peace.

Jitzhak Rabin's policy, fighting terrorism and, at the same time, pursuing a political solution, remains the critical challenge. The power of terror must be crushed. It must not be allowed to set the agenda. This, however, also requires a political perspective of how to overcome the conflict. In my view, it is crucial in this extremely difficult situation to again start a negotiation process.

A possible key to the serious start of such a process could be the international meeting or conference scheduled to take place in July. It is important to take advantage of this opportunity. At the end of such a conference a set of principles agreed by both parties could combine the most important elements and mark the beginning of a genuine new peace process:
- as a goal two states - Israel and Palestine - bound in mutual security, and the full normalisation of the Arab states with Israel.
- A lasting cease-fire with an effective security mechanism.
- a binding timetable for concluding the final status negotiations.
- a declared readiness of both sides to agree on painful compromises in order to resolve the difficult issues of settlements, security, refugees, the holy sites and the future of Jerusalem.
- and, finally, the guarantee of the international community to provide a monitoring for the implementation of the commitments of the two sides.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
There can only be security in and for Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv if the state at Israel's side is founded on democratic values.

The Palestinian people has a considerable democratic potential. People there want transparent institutions with full responsibility, they want free and fair elections. They want civil rights and a stable legal system and they want both to be protected by independent courts - just like people here in Israel.

Parallel to a fresh start in the peace process, we should firmly support those on the Palestinian side who want to build and develop these democratic structures. Not as a precondition but rather as part of the political perspective which is so crucial if the two peoples are to live together in peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Here at the University of Haifa, Jews and Arabs have been studying together for many years, have been working together on projects and challenges for which religion and origin are of no importance. Such conditions cannot be taken for granted anywhere. This university's message of peace is therefore all the more important.

We can help to implement this message politically in order to overcome this old and tragic conflict. We will do whatever we can to make a contribution. But ultimately the two sides have to live alongside each other, have to work together, just as you do here at your university.

The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition has a wonderful programmatic statement, which I want to quote in concluding my speech this morning: "We are each other's most important allies in the struggle for peace".

We should never forget that you don't have to make peace with your friends, but with your enemies. Just like war, peace begins in the minds of people. Peace begins with the recognition of and respect for the dignity of my enemy.

Thank you. Shalom.

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