In comparison with Israel, a German coalition government "seems like a very simple matter," remarked Angela Merkel when she met Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The Prime Minister's “The New Right” party is part of an eight-party coalition.

The extremely diverse alliance came together in June for one purpose: to replace Benjamin Netanyahu after twelve years in power.

Christian Meier

Editor in politics.

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In the first few months, the coalition around the central figures Bennett and Yair Lapid from the centrist party “There is a future” ruled largely silently despite the ideological contradictions - which led Merkel to the remark that the important thing was “that you, when you approach working together on a project, trusting each other ”.

The Chancellor added that this, as Bennett assured her, “works well on the whole” is “a very, very nice message” for her.

Displeased with Netanyahu

It is Merkel's eighth and presumably last official visit to Israel. The cabinet had been specially convened for a special meeting in which she attended. The close German-Israeli relations were "a stroke of luck and a treasure," said Merkel afterwards. The Chancellor is held in high esteem in Israel, in newspaper comments and also by Bennett on Sunday she was praised as a “true friend of Israel”. This applies not least to the words Merkel used in her speech to the Knesset in 2008 when she described Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust as "part of my country's raison d'être". "For me as the German Chancellor, the security of Israel is never negotiable", was her conclusion and that this "should not remain empty words in the hour of probation".

At the same time, it was no secret that there were considerable differences, especially between her and Netanyahu; on the phone she is said to have been downright annoyed with him once. A meeting with the current opposition leader was not included in the Chancellor's travel program - not even at the originally planned date in early September, which was postponed due to the events in Afghanistan. Instead, Merkel met with Israel's new President Yitzhak Herzog and Foreign Minister Lapid, as well as business representatives, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Haifa.

In the afternoon, Merkel laid a wreath in Yad Vashem. She wrote in the guest book of the Holocaust memorial that every visit “touches me anew in my heart”. The fact that there is Jewish life in Germany again is an “immeasurable vote of confidence” and an obligation to take decisive action against anti-Semitism, hatred and violence.

Merkel has not traveled to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah for years. The issue of the Middle East conflict no longer plays a major role in Israel. At least as long as Bennett is at the head of the government, not much is likely to change on the Israeli side. In a joint press conference with Merkel in the King David Hotel, he said in response to a question about the so-called two-state solution that an independent Palestine would mean “the emergence of a terrorist state”. The Chancellor repeated the German position and said that, in her opinion, the two-state solution was the right way to ensure that there can be “a democratic Jewish state in security” in the long term. Merkel is aware that this view is not shared by a large part of the Jerusalem government coalition; she tried to reconcile that by pointing outthat differences of opinion are part of a lively relationship like the German-Israeli one.

Difference in dealing with Iran

A similar difference emerges when it comes to Iran.

Bennett is here on the line of Netanyahu, of which he was once the office manager.

Iran is "on the cusp of a nuclear state," said the Prime Minister, it is destabilizing the region and threatening world peace.

With a view to Germany's current efforts to revive the nuclear agreement concluded in 2015, he warned against working on the regime in Tehran by peaceful means: "You see this as a weakness."

Merkel admitted that the company was in a "very critical situation" in view of Tehran's nuclear activities.

There must be an unmistakable message to Iran to return to the negotiating table quickly, and Germany is committed to this.

The security of Israel is a central point for every federal government, emphasized Merkel.