Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to get then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel to fire a top adviser more than a decade ago, a new German report revealed on Thursday.
The incident happened during negotiations for a submarine deal between the countries, which has since become mired in a major corruption probe that has ensnared top Netanyahu advisers, but not the premier himself formally.
According to the Panorama TV magazine, during talks in 2010 and 2011 between Israel and German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp, Merkel’s top foreign policy adviser, Christoph Heusgen, demanded that any deal to supply Israel with submarines be conditioned on Jerusalem halting all settlement construction in the West Bank and agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state — conditions that angered Netanyahu.
The report cited multiple sources, including Heusgen himself, former Israeli ambassadors to Germany Yacov Hadas-Handelsman and Yoram Ben-Zeev, and former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad.
It said Netanyahu’s top confidant Ron Dermer — then a staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office and currently the strategic affairs minister — approached Berlin’s then-ambassador to Israel, Harald Kindermann, and demanded that Merkel fire Heusgen.
Dermer reportedly stressed at the time that he was acting on orders and not of his own initiative.
The pressure campaign reached new heights when Germany’s Bild tabloid published a story in December 2012 in which an unnamed Israeli government official was cited as blasting Merkel for leaving too much of the policy-making to Heusgen, who “only wants to talk about settlement policy.”
Panorama said the identity of the official is unknown, but implies it might have been Dermer, noting that in 2011, Dermer was given authority to act as a liaison to Germany’s Axel Springer Group, which publishes Bild.
The German publication also published a piece last year revealing a leaked Hamas document, which served as evidence of the terror group’s unwillingness to reach a hostage-ceasefire deal. The publication, which led to the arrest of a Netanyahu aide and an IDF non-commissioned officer for leaking classified material, was later said to have distorted the Hamas document to serve the interests of Netanyahu’s government.
Merkel did not heed the demand to sack Heusgen, who remained her adviser until 2017 when he became Berlin’s envoy to the UN.
The report said, however, that Germany dropped the demand for concessions to the Palestinians as a condition for the submarine deal, which was followed up by additional deals for submarines and corvettes.
The high-profile investigation into the Israeli-German submarine deal, dubbed “Case 3000,” has led to charges against several senior defense official and close associates of Netanyahu, but not against the premier himself, on suspicion that they received illicit funds as part of a massive graft scheme in the multi-billion-shekel state purchase of naval vessels and submarines from German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp.
Some have called it the largest suspected graft scandal in the country’s history.
A state commission of inquiry said last year that Netanyahu’s decisions during the affair harmed Israel’s national security and foreign relations.