On 7 June 1973 Willy BrandtWest German chancellor, 1969–1974, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate; visited Israel in June 1973.What they wanted: Close ties with Israel alongside closeness to the Arab states: a “balanced policy”.More on Willy Brandt in “People and events” → landed in Israel, the first West German chancellor to pay an official visit. While Golda MeirPrime Minister, 1969–1974. Gazit headed her office twice: when she was Foreign Minister in the late 1950s, and as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1973.What they wanted: Security for Israel, and peace through direct negotiation, without a return to the 1967 lines.More on Golda Meir in “People and events” → and Brandt met alone, Gazit led the Israeli delegation in talks with the German delegation. He welcomed Bonn’s dialogue with the Arab states but, unlike his German counterpart, did not judge the situation in the Middle East to be dangerous.
Four months later the Yom Kippur War broke out.
On the evening of 10 June he approached Klaus Harpprecht, Brandt’s friend and adviser: he remarked on a “certain non-committal quality” in the chancellor’s words about Israel’s will for peace, recalled that “even Richard NixonPresident of the United States, 1969–1974.What they wanted: Stability in the Middle East and a check on Soviet influence, without a direct clash between the powers.More on Richard Nixon in “People and events” →” had clearly recognised it, and asked that Brandt let Golda know he wanted a “direct correspondence” with her, without the German Foreign Office. Before his flight, Brandt asked Golda how he could reach her directly.
A fork in the road
Friendship with Germany, twenty-eight years after the Holocaust.
Ask for clear words
The price: Pressing a chancellor who is also courting the Arab states.
Settle for what there is
The price: A “balanced” Germany, and a Europe drifting away.
And what happened?
Brandt asked Golda how he could reach her directly, and in the summer of 1973 they kept up a secret exchange.
Sources (1)
Israel and the world
The chancellor who knelt
Willy BrandtWest German chancellor, 1969–1974, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate; visited Israel in June 1973.What they wanted: Close ties with Israel alongside closeness to the Arab states: a “balanced policy”.More on Willy Brandt in “People and events” →, who fled Nazi Germany as a young man, was West German chancellor from 1969 to 1974. In December 1970 he knelt before the memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and the next year he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His 1973 visit was the first to Israel by a serving German chancellor, twenty-eight years after the Holocaust.
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