Berlin- Great ambitions were announced by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, when she took office for the first time. She was a candidate from the Green Party for the position of Prime Minister, succeeding former Chancellor Angela Merkel, before the party came in third place in the elections.
But Germany’s foreign policy during the era of the young minister – the first woman to hold the foreign ministry – raises great controversy, especially after Berlin stood firmly by Israel in its aggression against the Gaza Strip.
conflict
Months ago, Baerbock announced for the first time a “feminist foreign policy” based on “gender equality and support for peace,” as she said at United Nations meetings last February that “human rights are universal. A human life is a human life, regardless of origin, race, gender, sexual orientation, or belief.”
She continued at the time, “This is why we will speak out in this council when human rights are violated, whether in the East, West, North, or South.” But even though the number of victims of the Israeli war on Gaza approaches 20,000 martyrs, thousands of wounded, and about two million people displaced, it still clearly rejects a final ceasefire.
German political science expert Michel Brüning says – to Tel Aviv Tribune Net – that “German interests are increasingly defined as moral challenges, and although there is nothing wrong with defending one’s beliefs, the priority of morality comes at a high price.”
He adds, “In fact, this issue has isolated Berlin on several fundamental issues from the growing global consensus, and the most recent example of this is Germany’s own approach to the Middle East conflict.” The researcher used the term “Sonderweg”, which refers to a purely German approach to theorizing different from the European approach.
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, Baerbock has been strongly active in supporting Israel, and she said last October 23 in the European Council of Foreign Ministers that a ceasefire is not possible with the justification that “the war on terrorism is necessary” and that “Tel Aviv is still being exposed to rocket fire.” .
It repeated its position in subsequent media statements, but the German position did not go so far as to vote in the United Nations General Assembly against the ceasefire, and it contented itself with abstaining from voting.
A difficult gap to accept
Baerbock tried to strike some balance when she announced that her country would lift humanitarian support directed to Gaza, noting that Berlin is still suspending development aid directed at supporting job opportunities, civil society, and managing the water sector in the Palestinian territories.
Regarding whether Germany is unable to balance interests with the values it proclaims, Brüning says, “At a time when Baerbock proudly promotes the so-called feminist foreign policy, the gap between moral discourse and reality has become difficult to accept, especially for many countries in the South.” Global”.
Lydia Booth, an official at the German Friedrich-Ebert Foundation branch in the Middle East, writes in an article, “While experts, including feminists, warn that the Israeli government is undermining international law, those who represent the so-called German feminist policy have hidden from view.”
She adds, “They must remember that the simple and clear principle of feminist foreign policy is to work to promote political, not military, solutions.”
She explains that the guiding principles of German feminist policy were not applied when, after October 7, Berlin reviewed its cooperation with Palestinian civil society on suspicion of “link to terrorism,” nor when Baerbock voted within the European Union against the ceasefire in Gaza.
Booth says that Germany’s behavior at the United Nations created a state of “discontent” among those in the southern countries who were enthusiastically following these guidelines.
A number of Western positions became uneasy after thousands of casualties in Gaza, and France criticized Israel’s targeting of civilians. Spain, Belgium, and Ireland also raised the tone against the Israeli war leaders, and the United Kingdom reduced its support for Tel Aviv.
But Germany remains the only one among the major European countries that rejects its tone in the war on Gaza, and has currently become the largest Western supporter of Israel, after the United States.
“no changes”
Despite the traditional support for Israel, German foreign policy maintained, in some periods, a critical distance that allowed it a lot of margin, and the last foreign minister who embodied this matter was Sigmar Gabriel, who took over the ministry for 14 months between 2017 and 2018.
During which he met with organizations that strongly criticized Tel Aviv’s policies, which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a meeting with him, but he was followed by Heiko Maas, who supported Israel in its war on Gaza in 2021, and then the current Minister Baerbock.
According to Markus Bickel, head of the security and foreign affairs department at Table.Media, in an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net; There is no major change in foreign policy between the governments of Angela Merkel and Chancellor Olaf Schulz, but what distinguishes Annalena Baerbock, in his view, from her predecessors is “her raising the finger to talk about the bad situation of human rights during her visits to a number of Arab and Islamic countries.”
He adds, “With regard to Israel, the policy of the German government as a whole depends on viewing Tel Aviv as a supreme interest, which is shared by all the country’s parties,” and says that Germany believes that the statements of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – when he said in Berlin that “the Israeli massacres are worth 50 Holocausts.” – An incident that did not support the Palestinian position in Germany.
Within one month, Germany received two guests who greatly criticized Israel, which caused it embarrassment and forced its advisor Schulz to confirm his support for Tel Aviv. The first was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who accused Israel of acting as a “terrorist state,” and the second was Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Who said that what is happening in Gaza is “genocide.”
Baerbock’s position cannot be isolated from the position of Schultz, who strangely stated, at the end of last October, that he “never doubts that the Israeli army, in everything it does, will take into account the rules derived from international law,” according to his assessment.
Neither he nor his government issued any critical position on Israeli policies in Gaza, except for Berbock’s recent statement that it is in Israel’s interest to supply the people of Gaza with food so that “hunger does not feed terrorism,” as she put it.