Israel's President Shimon Peres on state visit to Czech Republic

The Israeli president Shimon Peres arrived in the Czech capital on Monday for a two-day state visit. Mr Peres was welcomed at Prague Castle by his Czech counterpart, Václav Klaus, who by coincidence is also currently the head of a state where the government is in a period of transition.

Shimon Peres and Václav Klaus (right), photo: author

Speaking in front of the media following a short meeting with Václav Klaus, Shimon Peres said the two presidents’ countries had some things in common.

“Both of us are small countries, but nobody can stop us from thinking in great terms or from really adopting great values”

With the Czech government serving “in resignation” after falling last week and a new Israeli government to be named on Tuesday, the issue of overseeing the formation of governments was raised at Monday’s news conference. When asked if Mr Peres had been able to provide Mr Klaus with a “recipe” for appointing a government, the Czech president quoted his guest as saying “politics is not a question of ideological purity but of compromise”. To this the Israeli leader, who is 85, embarked on a meditation on the difficulties of forming a coalition in a close-knit world.

Shimon Peres and Václav Klaus (right), photo: CTK

“I think basically coalition governments are a very delicate structure. It becomes more complicated because in addition to the national coalition there is a coalition with the rest of the world. I think there is no country today which is not affected by changes that are taking place outside the country. I told the President previously, we thought that Israel was a problem for the world, now we have discovered that the world is a problem for Israel. Because it’s the first time that governments are not being based on precedents, but are being faced with potentials. Ideology is usually a result of your experience, but modern governments are results of the unknown – innovations and appearances and changes. By and large I think it’s not for the worse, but for the better.”

No stranger to the Czech Republic, President Peres first visited Prague in 1990, even before diplomatic relations between the countries had been restored after a diplomatic deep freeze during the communist era. Relations between the two countries have been decidedly strong since that time, and Czech politicians have recently been calling for greater involvement in the peace process and closer ties between Israel and the EU as a whole. Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Alexandra Vondra said hosting an historic EU-Israeli summit was a “dream” of the Czech EU presidency. However, that idea came to nothing after it received a lukewarm reception within the European Commission.