German leaders significantly ramped up criticism of Israel on Tuesday, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz decrying massive IDF airstrikes on Gaza as Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul warned Berlin would soon discuss what steps to take to deal with the “unbearable” situation.
“The massive military strikes by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip no longer reveal any logic to me. How they serve the goal of confronting terror… In this respect, I view this very, very critically,” Merz said at a leaders summit in Turku, Finland.
“I am also not among those who said it first… But it seemed and seems to me that the time has come when I must say publicly — what is currently happening is no longer comprehensible.”
The chancellor said he planned to speak to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that week regarding Gaza. He did not reply to a question about German weapons exports to Israel, and a government official told a briefing that this is a matter for a security council presided over by Merz.
The comments marked a substantial change of tone from Berlin, which has long been Israel’s strongest defender in Europe.
The war against Hamas in Gaza has cast a shadow over relations, with Germany at pains to carefully calibrate its response to give support for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, but also to advocate for the rights and protections of Palestinians under international law.
Wadephul said Tuesday he would speak to Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar later, adding that it is unacceptable that Gazans have no food or medicine.
“Our committed fight against antisemitism and our full support for the right to exist and the security of the State of Israel must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip,” Wadephul said in an interview with the WDR broadcaster.
“We are now at a point where we have to think very carefully about what further steps to take,” he added, without giving further details.
Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, acknowledged German concerns but made no commitments.
“When Friedrich Merz raises this criticism of Israel, we listen very carefully because he is a friend,” Prosor told the ZDF broadcaster.
Later on Tuesday, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen denounced Israel’s deadly wave of strikes on civilian facilities in Gaza as “abhorrent” during a call with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Among the sites targeted was a school-turned-shelter.
The IDF said its strike on the school targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who had turned the facility into a command center.
“The expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza targeting civilian infrastructure, among them a school that served as a shelter for displaced Palestinian families, killing civilians, including children, is abhorrent,” von der Leyen said, according to a European Commission readout of the call.
The Israeli military has stepped up its Gaza operations in recent days in what it has described as a renewed push to destroy Hamas. It has called for the evacuation of civilians from large swaths of the enclave, including the entire cities of Rafah and Khan Younis in the southern Strip.
It has also recently begun allowing in limited amounts of aid into Gaza after sealing off the Strip at the beginning of March after hostage talks broke down, in a bid to pressure the terror group.
The UN-backed International Organization for Migration announced that Israel’s renewed offensive had displaced almost 180,000 people in the 10 days before May 25, expressing deep alarm at direct attacks on shelters, which it said had become “common.”
During the ceasefire, around half a million Palestinians were able to return home, but “that fragile progress has now been reversed,” the group said.
Gaza’s health ministry said Monday that at least 3,822 people had been killed in the territory since the latest ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,977 — a figure that cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
The war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 58 hostages, including 57 of the 251 abducted on October 7.