Days after Hamas launched attacks on Israel on October 7, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was one of the first Western leaders to reach in Tel Aviv. Standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he declared that Germany had “only one place – and that is next to Israel.”
This place now seems increasingly awkward for Germany, Israel’s second-largest army supplier and a nation whose leaders call support for the country “Staatsräson”, the nation’s reason for existence, as a method to atone for the Holocaust.
Last week, as Israel’s deadly offensive in Gaza continued, the chancellor again stood next to Mr. Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and used a different tone. “No matter how important the goal,” he asked, “can it justify such a monstrously high cost?”
Amid growing international outrage over the death toll, which health authorities in Gaza say exceeds 32,000, and the prospect of starvation looming in the enclave, German officials have begun to query whether their country’s support has gone too far.
“What has changed for Germany is that this unconditional support for Israel is unsustainable,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Institute for Global Public Policy in Berlin. “By sticking to the Staatsräson concept, they created the false impression that Germany had actually offered Netanyahu carte blanche.”
Berlin’s toughening tone is partly a response to concerns over Israel’s continued insistence that it enter Rafah to pursue Hamas operatives it says are in the southern city of Gazan. The change in position can be part of the evolution of the position of Germany’s most vital ally, the United States, which has shown growing dissatisfaction with Israel’s actions, including by abstaining from voting in the UN Security Council, which allowed the adoption of a ceasefire resolution.
The change in Germany’s position was felt inside a few weeks.
In January – just months after Hamas-led attacks that Israeli officials said killed about 1,200 people – Germany intervened to defend Israel against South Africa’s charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. She cited German history to position herself as something of a moral authority in relation to supporting the anti-genocide convention, and defended Israel against growing criticism of its handling of the war.
As recently as last month, Mr. Scholz balked at answering questions from the Munich Security Conference on whether Israel had violated international humanitarian law.
However, this week German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she would send a delegation to Israel because, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, her country “is obliged to remind all parties of their obligation to respect international humanitarian law.”
On her sixth visit to the region since the attack, Ms Baerbock also described the situation in Gaza as “hell” and insisted there could be no major offensive on Rafah, where greater than a million people had sought refuge.
“People can’t disappear into thin air,” she said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded to Ms. Baerbock’s criticism in: statement on social media, saying: “We expect our friends to continue to support Israel in these difficult times and not to weaken it against the Hamas terrorist organization.”
Berlin, like Washington, has tried to position itself as a concerned friend intent on ensuring Israel’s long-term security, without allowing it to go thus far as to lose much more international support. But the stakes are high for Germany too.
The country must maintain friendly relations around the world to advance its interests, whether Europe is breaking deals with Egypt to curb migration or in search of support for measures to support Ukraine against Russia. Foreign policy experts say that by insisting on its strong support for Israel, Germany has also weakened its ability to credibly criticize authoritarian governments like Vladimir Putin’s for human rights abuses.
The sense of declining credibility on human rights is especially strong amongst the group of developing or underdeveloped countries sometimes called the Global South, as Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim mentioned during his visit to Berlin this month.
“We oppose colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or expropriation of any country, whether in Ukraine or Gaza,” Mr. Anwar told reporters, standing next to Mr. Scholz. “Where have we thrown our humanity? Where does this hypocrisy come from?”
Until recently, German public opinion gave the impression to be overwhelmingly supportive of government support for the Israeli military campaign. But polls conducted by public broadcasters in recent weeks show that almost 70 percent surveyed Germans believed that Israel’s military actions weren’t justified; just a few weeks earlier it was a number about 50 percent.
This issue became inevitable for Mr. Scholz even during town hall meetings with voters.
“I think Germany’s foreign policy is contradictory and even hypocritical,” one woman told Mr. Scholz earlier this week in Brandenburg an der Havel, near Berlin.
On the one hand, she said, Germany is asking on Israel to not invade Rafah. On the other hand, Germany remained one of the largest arms suppliers to Israel. “We really need to do something to protect these people,” she said.
It is unlikely that Berlin’s toughened stance on the war indicates any broader turn against Israel. This week, the Interior Ministry said it will include questions on Israel in its updated citizenship test, reflecting how strongly Germans see support for Israel as part of their identity.
Beyond a change of tone, Berlin is unlikely to do anything short of symbolic, policymakers say, unless Washington takes tougher measures. In a written response to MP Sevim Dagdelen’s query about whether Germany would suspend arms deliveries, the government said it will consider them individually.
The most vital decision she could have made, said Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesman for the center-right Christian Democrats in parliament, was to revive funding for the predominant U.N. agency helping the Palestinians, UNRWA. Following allegations that some agency employees participated in or in the wake of the October 7 attack, Germany said it will suspend funding. (U.N. officials said they’d fired 10 of the 12 staff initially accused and ordered an investigation into the agency, while asking countries that had suspended aid payments to reconsider the case.)
Germany now appears to be changing its position. This week, Germany said it will again fund the agency in areas where it operates outside Gaza.
According to German and European Union officials acquainted with the situation, several weeks earlier German diplomats had demanded the removal of UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini as a precondition for restoring funding.
However, the same officials said they’d seen a marked softening of Germany’s position since then and that Germany appeared to have abandoned its request to exchange Mr. Lazzarini. EU and German officials said Germany would likely make funds available for operations in Gaza by May.
“It could be one small action,” said Benner, the foreign policy analyst. “But I think the damage to Germany’s credibility has already been done. Now it is a damage control mission.”
Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed to the Brussels reports.