On 13 and 14 June Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and Federal Development Minister Dirk Niebel will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories.

They will be focusing on current developments in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the region as a whole, the stalemate in the Middle East peace process and the economic and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

In Israel Federal Foreign Minister Westerwelle will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman. In the Palestinian territories Minister Westerwelle will meet inter alia President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. He will be finding out how the building of state institutions there is progressing. In Ramallah he will inaugurate a German Government-funded project to establish a digital register of births, marriages and deaths.

On 14 June Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Dirk Niebel will visit the Gaza Strip, where he wants to see what progress key German-Palestinian development cooperation projects have been making. Minister Niebel will meet inter alia Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and visit the purification plant in Sheikh Ajleen which Germany has rehabilitated.