“This government was ready to abolish the Israeli democracy and those who are in this government also killed the peace process in ’95, and I have to say they killed the peace process by first killing our friend Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,” Schmit said.
“I’m a great friend of Israel, but I never forget that this government … is a far-right, extreme-right government,” he said.
“We cannot turn a blind eye [to] the level of violence and destruction for which the citizens pay the highest price,” he said. “We do not forget to free the [Israeli] hostages” in the Gaza Strip, he added, backing calls for an international peace summit.
He compared the “terrible human tragedy” unfolding in Gaza to his own family’s experience of conflict during the Second World War, recounting how his father watched his own father being shot and killed in front of him as Germany invaded Luxembourg in 1940, clashing with French troops.
“What happened to my father, my father’s father, happens every day, every day in Ukraine, every day in Gaza,” Schmit said.
Mideast conflict
Faraj Zayoud, in charge of international relations for the Palestinian group Fatah, hailed Schmit’s words. “We, the Fatah and the Palestinian leadership, welcome and highly appreciate his stance and pledges,” Zayoud said.
