At the time, Austria was home to the main waystation for Jews emigrating to Israel from the Soviet Union. In late September of 1973, Palestinian militants took several Jewish migrants bound for Israel hostage and demanded that the Austrian government close the center run by the Jewish Agency that was processing them.
Kreisky relented, prompting howls of protest from Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir flew to Vienna to convince Kreisky to reopen the center. Kreisky refused (though a few months later, Austria opened a new facility).
In the years that followed, the relationship only worsened.
Kreisky, who had become a towering figure in European Social Democracy, ruling with an absolute majority for 13 years, was convinced that tensions in the region could only be resolved by accommodating the Palestinians. He took issue with the Israel’s increasingly hardline stance under conservative Prime Minister Menachem Begin, calling the country a “police state” in 1978.
Meanwhile, Kreisky became the first western leader to meet with Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who Israel considered to be a terrorist group. In 1979, Kreisky went a step further, recognizing the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people. The Arab world cheered him.
“Kreisky was the only one who could get away with that, but sometimes he went overboard,” said Wolfgang Petritsch, a former advisor to Kreisky and the author of a biography about him.
Source link : https://www.politico.eu/article/adolf-hitler-homeland-austria-became-israel-europe-bff-palestine-conflict/
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Publish date : 2023-11-15 03:00:00
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