Baerbock meets the Syrian Foreign Minister – this time with a handshake

A lack of a handshake during Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit to Damascus made headlines just over a week ago. At her meeting with Syria’s de facto Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in Saudi Arabia, however, there was a handshake greeting, as was known from German delegation circles. The two politicians met on the sidelines of a Syria conference in Riyadh.

During her visit to the Syrian capital on January 3rd, Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa did not greet the Green politician with a handshake, but did extend his hand to her French colleague Jean-Noël Barrot.

In Syria and internationally, people are closely monitoring these weeks to see whether the transitional government that emerged from the Islamist group HTS will respect the rights of women and allow them to participate in public life in the country. A handshake between a strange man and a strange woman is unusual among believers in Islamic societies – and from the point of view of some legal scholars, it is even forbidden. But there is no clear rule and no dominant religious custom.

“When I arrived, it was already clear to me that there would obviously be no ordinary handshakes here,” said the Green politician when asked by a journalist after the incident in Damascus. But it was also made clear to the Islamist hosts that they disapproved of this practice.