(Communicated by the President’s Spokesperson)
President Reuven Rivlin this morning (Sunday, 16 November 2014), met with German Foreign Minister Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for a working meeting at the President's Residence.
The President opened his remarks by saying, “Mr. Foreign Minister, it is a pleasure to welcome you to Jerusalem, the capital city of the State of Israel. Lately we have faced many troubles, Israel is not at war with Islam, and we have no intention to be. Unfortunately, we are fighting fundamentalists and fundamentalism, and that is the real problem.”
The President concluded by thanking the Foreign Minister for Germany’s support for Israel, and said, “Negotiations and dialogue are the only way forward. In the past, it has been proved that any kind of unilateral decisions are unsuccessful, and in fact make the situation worse. There is no real alternative to dialogue. As you said to Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, there is a need to support negotiations, and to avoid unilateral decisions.”
The Foreign Minister thanked the President and said, “I mentioned this morning in a meeting with Foreign Minister Liberman, Israel's contribution to calm the situation. We hope we will experience a new attempt to re-enter a phase of negotiations, from my point of view this is the only way out.”
In relation to the unilateral decisions, the German Foreign Minister said, “Unilateral decisions pose an obstacle to the success of negotiations.”