Good news for the Middle East?

By Michel Rauch

There is a national consensus among all strands of German society that the Holocaust must never be forgotten. Even Gerhard Schroeder and Helmut Kohl agree on this. Yet, significantly, they disagree over the planned Berlin Holocaust Memorial, an abstract field of columns near the Brandenburg Gate. Schroeder is fiercely opposed to the design, and this is widely interpreted as pointing to changes to come in the sensitive area of German-Israeli relations.

Differences between the two men on the subject of Israel can be attributed in part to the gaping generation gap that separates them. Schroeder, the first chancellor to have been born since the war, represents a younger generation which expects a balanced Middle East policy, instead of the self-indulgent rituals of guilt. Self-confident, yet in no way anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist, this young Germany is in not prepared to support the Israeli state blindly whatever injustices it may commit.

Traditionally, German protest has been restricted to half-hearted official statements urging Israel to respect and uphold legitimate Arab rights and interests. But such words were never followed up by action or pressure of any kind.

In the past, only the Green Party had the courage -- that is, was prepared to commit the sacrilege -- of speaking out against Israeli atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza. In doing so, however, they gave voice to what many young Germans think about the excesses of Israeli policy. Such critical views, unthinkable for politicians of the Kohl generation, caused an outcry when they were first expressed in Germany. But in Schroeder's Germany, it seems likely they will be heard more often and more forcefully.

The world will have to come to terms with a more aggressive German foreign policy in the near future, not only in the Middle East, but throughout the world. As one German TV presenter unfortunately expressed it on election night, the Federal Republic under Schroeder is likely to flex its muscles more often in the coming years than it has of late. The country, which is the third largest economy in the world, clearly feels it has the right and the might to make its voice heard in the international arena, and to do so without needing to show excessive sensitivity to anyone else's feelings -- inside or outside Europe.

So who will be the next German foreign minister? Schroeder's preference would go to Rudolf Scharping who lost the 1994 elections to Kohl. In 1995 Scharping was ousted as leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and is now leader of the European Social Democratic Party. He is a rather lackluster and straightlaced character, a hard-worker who lacks charisma and a very poor speaker. The Green Party, on the other hand, hopes the post may fall to them if they join the Schroeder government as junior coalition partner. Their charismatic co-founder Joschka Fisher is famous for not mincing words. But whoever will become Germany's next foreign minister, he will have to focus on revamping his own ministry first.

A whole generation of Germans have never known any other chancellor than Kohl. In addition, two generations have never known a foreign minister who was not appointed by the small Liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which has held a virtual monopoly over the Auswartige Amt, or Foreign Ministry, since 1969 and has shown signs of mistaking the ministry for a heirloom, that belonged to them as by right. Yet for many critics, the present incumbent Klaus Kinkel has been guilty of gross mismanagement, as he used the new unified Germany as grounds to bid for a larger role in world politics and call for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Nor did Kinkel's Middle East policies endear him to the Arab world. For a start, there were suspicions surrounding the close personal and family ties between the Kinkels and Israel. Kinkel's daughter lives in Israel, and is married to an Israeli. More seriously, German foreign affairs correspondents who met Kinkel for an off-the-record briefing in Cairo two years ago were shocked by his ignorance of Middle East issues. For them, the changing of the guard in Bonn and the infusion of new blood into the German Foreign Ministry can only mean a change for the better.

But what exactly should the Arab World expect from the next foreign minister? In the long run, certain good may come of it; but in the short term, they should probably not expect too much. There are several reasons for this.

For one thing, no mention was made of the Middle East at any point during the election campaign, nor does it figure in any of the parties' manifestos. Both the general public and the politicians were instead focused on domestic and European issues -- issues such as the development of the European Union and the single currency, together with proposals for strengthening both NATO and the UN. The problems which dominated the election campaign were how to lower the unemployment rate (running at 10.7 per cent or 6 million jobless people in July), cut taxes, create new jobs, secure the welfare system, compete in the world market and fight crime. In the context of the heated debate these issues raised, there are probably not many Germans who have time to care whether the Palestinians get 13 per cent of the West Bank this week, next month or in 2001.

This indifference is implicit in Germany's traditional approach to foreign policy, which has been organised around a small number of constants. Historically, the Germans have always seen, and still see, the Arab world as above all a marketplace, a venue for trade and commerce. There is no colonial history that obliges them to assume any more complex form of political involvement.

Kohl's government saw itself as one of the closest allies of the US administration, supporting American positions, sometimes even before they had been articulated. Though the Social Democrats have in the past been known occasionally to step out of line and take issue with Uncle Sam, when the chips were down and the elections looming, they chose to guarantee continuity. Like other candidates before him, Schroeder went on the ritual pilgrimage to the White House to assure Clinton of his reliability and his commitment. "Whatever the result [of the elections], America's critical alliance with Germany will not be rocked", the New York Times confidently predicted. Will that prediction be borne out?

The US monopoly on world leadership has in the past been antagonistic to any single-handed German Middle East initiative. But this dilemma may vanish into the mists of the past as national foreign policy shifts onto a broader pan-European stage. France, for example, a country that has often bewildered Germany by its solo struggles against the US and its home-made approach to the Middle East, might well force the EU states to play a more active -- and more objective -- role in the region.

Arab leaders have often called for a coordinated European commitment in the hope of a fairer hearing for Arab interests than they are ever likely to receive from the pro-Israeli US. There are indications that the Schroeder government, if it has not made up its mind on this subject, is, at least, all ears. Germany's role as a potential broker in the region has still to be defined. Whether this occurs sooner or later will depend on just how forceful the new German assertiveness in foreign affairs turns out to be.