Lapid Set for Official Visit to Germany Next Month
3 min read
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced that Yair Lapid would go to Germany next month for an official state visit.
The Prime Minister is slated to leave on September 11th for Berlin in the afternoon. He would stay overnight in the capital.
On September 12th, he will meet German officials before returning to Israel.
No details
No details were provided about the trip by the Prime Minister’s Office, such as the officials that the premier would meet during his visit.
Nonetheless, it is likely that he would meet Annalena Baerbock, the Foreign Minister, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor.
Scholz had met with Lapid back in March when he visited Israel. At that time, Naftali Bennett had been the prime minister, while Lapid was serving as the foreign minister.
He had stressed during the trip that they could no longer postpone a nuclear agreement with Iran. Therefore, it is expected that the Iran nuclear deal issue would also be on the agenda of Lapid’s trip.
Germany is one of the prominent countries that are trying to renegotiate a return to the agreement signed back in 2015.
Israeli has told its EU allies repeatedly that Iranians should not be offered any more concessions.
US response
The United States submitted its response last week to the Iranian proposals that had been drafted by the European Union, which has brought the sides close to signing an agreement.
But, since then, Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran, has warned that they will not sign a deal that involves subjecting its undeclared nuclear sites to a probe from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Yair Lapid’s trip to Germany will happen less than a month after Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, visited the country.
His accusation of ’50 holocausts’ against Israel had resulted in a wave of outrage in Israel and other parts of the world.
The speech
The comments had come from Abbas at a press conference in Berlin alongside Scholz. This was after he was asked if he was apologetic about the Munich massacre.
The group that carried out the massacre had been affiliated with his Fatah party at the time. Abbas had said that they could go over the past and that is when he talked of the ’50 holocausts’ that Israel had committed.
While Scholz had been uncomfortable with Abbas’ comments, he did not say anything at the time, but later condemned the comments.
He also discussed them with Lapid a few days later, who denounced the leader of the Palestinian Authority. Lapid said that it was a monstrous lie and a moral disgrace.
Munich will have a ceremony that marks 50 years of the Olympic Massacre that happened in 1972 and Lapid will arrive in Germany a week after it.
There has been controversy surrounding the memorial, as the official Germany ceremony was boycotted by the families of the 11 Israeli victims because of a compensation dispute.
A report on Tuesday said that the family members were close to making a deal with the German government for more compensation.
