Former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer does not seem to think much of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not a man of peace, although his decision to withdraw troops from the Gaza Strip will have a lasting impact on the region, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said in a column to be published Thursday.
Fischer, who was a trusted and active mediator in the Middle East before leaving office in November, wrote in the German weekly Die Zeit that he had always had an ambivalent take on the Israeli leader.“He was not a man of peace, neither as a politician nor as a soldier,” Fischer said of Sharon, whose political future has been thrown into doubt since he suffered a major stroke last week.Fischer noted that Sharon was “the political foster father of Israeli territorial expansion and with it the settlement movement” and was deeply skeptical about the Palestinians’ will for peace.“He never seriously believed in the possibility of peace with the Palestinians, and certainly never with Yasser Arafat,” he said, referring to the late Palestinian leader.
And Fischer thinks Sharon should have believed in the possibility of peace with the palestinians with Arafat at the helm? If anyone should have understood Arafat’s real aims, it would be Fischer.
But that’s Fischer for you. He may look like Benny Hill, but there’s nothing amusing about his views.
