Trip of the Parliamentary Group Chairs to Palestine

At the end of our trip to the Palestinian territories we met with Minister President Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah. During the meeting in a friendly and and open atmosphere we expressed our support for the French peace initiative. DIE LINKE supports the acknowledgement of a Palestinian state. The current policy of the Israeli government on the other hand aims at a one-state-solution.

Minister President Hamdallah reported impressively about the devastating economic and social consequences of the Israeli settlement and occupation policy. We agreed that it should come to concrete changes and improvements for the people in the Palestinian territories as soon as possible.

Accompanied by the office leader of the Rosa-Luxemburg foundation, Katja Hermann, and representatives of Palestinian non-governmental organisations we got an impression of the wall building by Israeli authorities near Ramallah. It was depressing to see, how this construction separates people and how severely it affects the social and economic life of Palestinians. In the evening we met with representatives of left Palestinian parties and non-governmental organisations (Aida Tuna, MPs of the United Left; Bassam Al-Salhi, General Secretary  of the PPP; Jamal Juma, founder of the Anti-Wall-Campaign; maher Al-Sharif, central committee of the PPP; Qais Abd Al-Karim, vice general secretary of the DFLP; Sama Aweida, founder of the Women's Studies Center in Jerusalem; Siham Bargouthi, vice chair of FIDA; Xavier Abu Eid, PLO; Dr. Yazid Anani, professor at Birzeit university).

All talks were dominated by the urging of a quick political solution of the conflict. Many a times it was said, that the German government would do too little to get the peace process going again. This would explicitly need more pressure on the Israeli government. We hope to be able to welcome the Palestinian left in the German Bundestag soon, because its perspective on the conflict is mainly unknown to the German public. It would surely be a gain, also in view of a change of the Middle East policy of the German government, if this could be achieved.“