He was looking forward to the time without election campaigns, said Robert Habeck recently, somewhere between Jena and Weimar, when he was still in the middle of an election campaign. He answers the tiresome question that concerns his party the way he likes to handle it: with a rather optimistic view of things.
If you ask him how he intends to maintain this tension between the green polls until the next Bundestag election, he says: "We will use the coming year for in-depth conceptual work."
He calls this "strength training".
In 2020, however, he doesn't even wait for it. Why too? There is a lot to do for someone like him, who is now one of the country's most popular politicians. Its "quasi-ruling government party in waiting" (O-Ton Habeck) has for a long time only kept a few percentage points away from the ruling Union. It is obvious that such survey values should slowly penetrate into state-bearing spheres and should therefore be well prepared.
In-depth conceptual work therefore also means that Robert Habeck sets out to exploit certain thematic lines. So everything that his six-year term as Minister of Agriculture in Kiel may not have prepared him enough for. Foreign policy, for example.
In political circles, this means "speaking" if someone is sufficiently familiar with the facts so that he can say a few words. Habeck knows his way around Denmark very well, but has never been to Israel.
Maximum state support
A top German politician may not have traveled the entire Middle East, but, as far as is clear, he should be able to speak in one way or another when it comes to Israel. Also because the wonderful little country offers a lot of rather ugly debates.
So now, in mid-December: four and a half days in Israel for Robert Habeck. He was flanked on his first trip to the Middle East by the knowledgeable member of the Bundestag Omid Nouripour and MEP Sergey Lagodinsky. He met President Reuven Rivlin, visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, of course, the Yad Vashem memorial.
"The close and historical obligation of the German relationship with Israel must not be limited to the past. Germany always has a special responsibility, Israel can rightly expect this," he says of his trip himself, and it already sounds like a state-sponsor.
He noticed that while everyone else is always asking what's going on in Germany, says Habeck - he recently went on a small European tour to Brussels, Paris and Rome - the interest in Germany in Israel is rather low. Instead, everyone tries to "tell me their view of things and their experiences here".
That is certainly not a false observation. Anyone who travels as a blank sheet of paper wants to be described.
Habeck's principle reaches its limits
Germany and Israel shared common challenges, says Habeck on the phone, on the way back to the airport. There is, on the one hand, Israel's security, but also the "increasing pressure on the liberal constitution of democracy".
The latter is an interesting point, especially from an Israeli perspective; after all, Habeck speaks of a country with a political spectrum in which Benjamin Netanyahu can now almost be considered moderate. Where liberal groups whose views are not based on the government line are massively hampered - even from the state side.
There is hardly any more difficult terrain for a German politician, especially for someone who is not familiar with it and who openly admits it. Habeck's principle of preserving one's naivety in politics inevitably reaches its limits here. There is no naivety in the Middle East in the sense of impartiality. Because where everything is politically exploited, the supposedly neutral observer is one thing above all else: naive.
President Rivlin @PresidentRuvi yesterday met with the delegation of the Chairman of the Alliance 90 / The Greens Robert Habeck, Bundestag member Omid @Nouripour and Member of the EP @SLagodinsky Thanks to the President for taking the time on this politically so turbulent day pic. twitter.com/fh7jwdffVy
- Susanne.Wasum-Rainer (@GerAmbTLV) December 13, 2019Accordingly, there was a lot of tugging about the travel program, and not only the party-oriented Böll Foundation, with excellent experts on site, was allowed to have a say, but also the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
So Habeck visited a trauma center in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, which is plagued by rocket fire from the neighboring Gaza Strip, which Habeck naturally did not see.
But he also spent one of the four days visiting the West Bank, or, as Habeck cautiously put it: "In the Palestinian Territories."
It is still one of the striking experiences of such a trip to the region to visit the Hebron city center with Israeli ex-soldiers. Here, in this once lively Palestinian city center, the effects of the Israeli occupation that has lasted for half a century are becoming plastic. His advisors and the speakers from the Böll Foundation insisted on this visit, and it is good that Habeck has agreed to this.
Habeck says about this visit to Hebron that it was new to him, "how snotty the settlements that I have seen are, how professionally they are planned and built, and how this manifests itself in the truest sense of the word . "
His verdict on the trip after these days is clear: "It was just one incentive for me," he says.
And he would not be Robert Habeck if he did not add to explain why this taster course Middle East conflict was now important: because "here abstract knowledge quickly translates into concrete experience and thus into a completely different basis for discussions".
Nobody can say anything against the basics.
