The Times of Israel reports: Aware of Germany’s commitment to Israel in light of the Holocaust, the Palestinians will not ask Berlin to abandon its traditionally pro-Israel position, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on the eve of a visit to the German capital.
“We know history. We will not demand that Germany put more pressure on Israel,” Abbas told Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsmagazine. However, he noted that Berlin supports Palestinian statehood and called upon Chancellor Angela Merkel to “use her good friendship with Israel to promote peace.”
Abbas, accused by many Israelis of Holocaust denial due to his 1982 doctoral dissertation about the “secret relationship between Nazism and Zionism,” in 2014 called the German mass killings of Jews “the most heinous crime” against humanity of the modern era.
Abbas is due to meet with Merkel in Berlin Tuesday to seek support for a French initiative to hold an international peace conference in Paris this summer, a plan rejected by Israel.
In the interview, Abbas asked the world not to neglect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of other issues on the international agenda. “Of course we notice that the instability of the whole region is having an effect on interest in the Palestinian issue. But the world must not forget us,” he said.
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