Death zone Gaza: Germany is complicit

"We can't just stand by and watch as people in Gaza risk dying of starvation," said German Chancellor Scholz (SPD) on his most recent visit to Israel on 17 March 2024, with the head of Israel's government Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) standing beside him. 

In recent weeks, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) has repeatedly said that Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are now refugees within their narrow strip of coastal land, "cannot disappear into thin air". Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock seem helpless and overwhelmed. They may also be horrified. What has Israel, their "partner in values" (as Scholz put it on 16 March 2023, one year ago) got them into? 

After the massacre of Israelis on Israeli territory carried out by the nationalist religious Palestinian organisation Hamas and their ideological allies on 7 October 2023, both chancellor and foreign minister assured the Israeli government of their unqualified solidarity. 

They have repeatedly stressed Israel's right to defend itself, which includes being entitled to wage war in the Gaza Strip. Hamas are entrenched in tunnels there, behind the civilian population and the Israeli hostages. 

Approved arms deliveries increase tenfold

In his government statement following the massacre, on 12 October 2023, Scholz said he had "asked Prime Minister Netanyahu" to "inform him of whatever support he needs". These requests for support would be "immediately reviewed and also granted", Scholz told parliament. 

It was no surprise that the German government's permissions for deliveries of arms to Israel shot up. In 2023, these export permissions rose to a total value of 326 million euros – ten times what they had been the previous year. These figures were provided by the government at the request of BSW member of parliament Sevim Dagdelen. 

Firearms ammunition, shoulder-mounted weapons, wheeled vehicles, electronics and warships – the permitted arsenal covers the whole spectrum of modern warcraft. After the United States, Germany is the second most important supplier of arms to Israel. The German government differentiates between "weapons of war" and "other armaments", which critics say is an artificial distinction. A diesel engine for a tank or navigation electronics for a drone (other armaments) can be used to wage war just as rocket-propelled grenades (weapons of war) can. 

It might be better to differentiate in another area: it is not quite accurate to speak only of Germany supplying arms to Israel. Alongside pure exports, there is also close industrial cooperation on armaments between the two countries. Weapons systems are jointly developed. Arms companies have branches in both countries. 

Weapons for urban warfare

This cooperation has intensified over the past 15 years, under the doctrine of Israel's security being a "German reason of state". In industrial policy terms, this can be an elegant way for the German government to use taxpayers' money to subsidise German arms companies – as we have seen with the provision of submarines. 

One of the shoulder-mounted weapons being used in the Gaza war, for example, is the RGW 90 anti-tank grenade launcher, also known as the Matador. It is made in a factory in Burbach, Siegerland, which is now owned by the Israeli arms company Rafael. After 7 October, Germany supplied 3000 grenade launchers to Israel, doubtless including a large number of Matadors. 

The term "anti-tank" is slightly misleading, however, especially when it comes to Gaza. The Matador is ideally suited to urban warfare: it can destroy not only enemy tanks (which Hamas does not possess) but buildings. And social media is awash with videos that show Israeli soldiers doing exactly that.

How is Israel waging this war in Gaza, for which it is using German weapons and “other armaments”? On 26 October 2023, after two and a half weeks of intense aerial bombardment by Israel, Chancellor Scholz said confidently: "Israel is a democratic state that is guided by very humanitarian principles. And so we can be sure that in what the Israeli army is doing, it will abide by the rules set by international law. I have no doubt about this." 

Civilian deaths factored into combat considerations

It would be an understatement to say that Scholz was somewhat wide of the mark with this statement. In the course of the past six months, facts have begun to stack up that suggest the opposite. For a start, there is the number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed. 

The death toll currently stands at 33,000, and more than half of that number are women and children. Measured against the number of attacks on Gaza and the total population living there, there have been significantly more civilian deaths than during any campaign by a western army in the past three decades.

Larry Lewis has conducted the most detailed investigation in this area. Lewis is a former Pentagon researcher, whose job was to find ways for modern armies to minimise civilian casualties in war. By his estimation, Israel has failed in this aim quite dramatically. 

Andreas Krieg, expert on military and international relations at the renowned King´s College in London, points to the use of artificial intelligence by the Israeli army in identifying targets in the Gaza Strip. The computer-generated target acquisition is calibrated in such a way that dozens of civilian victims are factored into the goal of taking out a single Hamas fighter. 

War crimes

To make matters worse, according to Krieg, after the target has been selected by AI, it is frequently "dumb bombs" that are used to hit it – non-guided missiles that are affected by wind and weather. These bombs are supplied by the United States, not by Germany. They should never be used in densely populated areas, Krieg says. "Intelligent" target acquisition and dumb bombs are a fatal combination. 

The academic, who also advises the British government, put it in no uncertain terms in an interview with [the German news programme] Panorama: "It's a war crime". The military expert cites the detonation of civil institutions such as university buildings, even when these buildings no longer have any military use for the other side, as another example of Israel clearly breaching the ius in bello, i.e. the international law governing conduct in war. 

At this point, the Israeli military's record has been heavily tarnished by a number of serious incidents that have been reported all over the world. Aerial images taken in southern Gaza by Israel's army, showing several people who seem to be bystanders being killed by armed drones, have been seen around the globe.

The army has not disputed the authenticity of the images. It did, however, claim that the people killed could have been "terrorists". The incident was being investigated, an army spokesperson told an Israeli newspaper. The army did not respond to questions from Panorama. 

German government complicit

The targeted killing of seven employees of the World Central Kitchen aid organisation, who were travelling in three vehicles several hundred metres apart in central Gaza on 1 April 2024, resulted in the army suspending the officer directly responsible for the operation, calling it "a serious mistake". The question of whether this could have been intentional remains and needs to be answered in a criminal trial. 

On 4 April 2024 Haaretz, a newspaper that is critical of the Israeli government, reported another situation that incriminates state actors. The article quotes a letter to the Israeli cabinet from a doctor who works in a prison camp. 

The Israeli doctor reports regularly having to amputate the hands and feet of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza as a result of injuries caused by being kept constantly fettered. "We are all guilty," the doctor writes, clearly troubled by his conscience, in the letter that Haaretz says is addressed to ministers.

Will the Israeli state, whose justice system has come under pressure since the current government led by Netanyahu took office on 29 December 2022, find the strength to put those guilty of war crimes on trial, and to sentence them? It is unclear. If not, the international criminal courts will have to step in. In any case it is becoming apparent that, given the catastrophic consequences of the campaign in Gaza, Germany's government is facing political problems at the very least over its support of Israel. 

"The German government is complicit in the situation," says Aref Hajjaj, a former foreign office employee. The retired official, who was born in Palestine and worked as an interpreter and advisor on the Arab world for Helmut Schmidt, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Helmut Kohl, accuses the Scholz government of one-sidedness in its policy on the Middle East. Close military cooperation with Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government sends the wrong signal, he says.

Germany to send a delegation

Are war crimes being committed with weapons manufactured in Germany? The risk, at least, is obvious. "All those who supply to Israel, all those who support the Israeli army, especially with material and finance, are complicit," says Andreas Krieg, the expert from King's College. "Germany is no exception." 

Germany's government remains tight-lipped on the subject. The chancellor's office and the foreign office continue to sidestep the question of whether Israel is committing war crimes, and what the future risk of this might be. The German government says it has no information about whether and how weapons supplied by Germany are being used in Gaza. 

Scholz and Baerbock give themselves credit for emphasising the necessity of staying within international law, both in public and in talks with Israeli officials. In March, foreign minister Baerbock announced her intention to send an expert delegation to Israel, to speak to the Israeli side about issues of international law. Yet according to the German foreign office, the delegation has not yet set off. 

For Aref Hajjaj, talk of international law is no more than lip service. With reference to Scholz's latest meeting with Netanyahu, Hajjaj, the former foreign-office advisor, says: "I would have liked the chancellor to speak plainly." Scholz should have condemned Israel's obvious violations of the international laws of war, Hajjaj tells me; he should have said: "We reject this". He adds that Scholz should have threatened, at least, to cut off the supply of arms.

Gaza – just so much rubble

The Gaza Strip now looks like an uninhabitable and ungovernable heap of rubble, in which around two million people are nevertheless somehow keeping themselves alive. It is now dawning on the German government that it has a problem with its Middle East policy. 

Foreign Minister Baerbock has long been making the case for increasing aid to Gaza. When she visited Israel on 26 March 2024, she reported that food aid partly financed by Germany was being blockaded at a World Food Program depot in Jordan. Israel should enable aid to be brought into Gaza, she said. There is a plan to let in 100 lorries a day. 

The minister made her statement four weeks ago. The Jordanian foreign minister was in Berlin this week. And this week, Baerbock was once again in the Middle East. The top diplomat has a busy travel schedule, but according to the foreign office, most of the food aid is still stuck in Jordan. Just a few lorries have gone in as "pilots". The daily aid convoy of 100 lorries is yet to materialise. 

Scholz coalition legacy

No one knows what will happen now in Gaza. In Jerusalem, Scholz asks if the human cost of this campaign is not high enough already. Netanyahu gives him a roasting on stage. Israel is doing everything it can to minimise civilian casualties, he says. The prime minister has rejected the idea of prioritising political solutions; security through strength comes first. Benjamin Netanyahu, self-declared "Mister Security", has been saying this for exactly three decades. Now he has a new old argument: the confrontation with Iran. Netanyahu is using it to distract from the catastrophe in Gaza. And Scholz is seconding that motion with all his might. 

Shifting the focus to the threat from Iran is a mechanism by which the legal entitlements of Palestinians have often been pushed aside before. Gaza is uncomfortable for Netanyahu. He has neither won a "total victory" over Hamas nor freed the hostages by force of arms, and is therefore exposed to accusations of having broken his central promises for this war. 

But Gaza is also uncomfortable for Scholz. In the name of historical responsibility for Israel, Chancellor Scholz has given his unreserved support to a government that includes ultra-nationalist and racist parties. It was to be expected that a retaliatory campaign would begin after the murderous attack by Hamas on 7 October, bringing death and destruction, but creating neither justice nor security. Ignoring these risks looks set to be the Scholz coalition legacy. 

Stefan Buchen

© Qantara.de 2024

Translated from the German by Ruth Martin

This article first appeared on www.panorama.de