The first special flights from Israel have already landed in Germany. More Lufthansa planes are scheduled to take off today. However, if the situation in Israel worsens further, the Bundeswehr wants to evacuate the Germans.
The Bundeswehr, in coordination with the Foreign Office, is preparing to fly German citizens out of Israel if necessary. The Ministry of Defense said that preventive preparations should ensure that the federal government has made all the necessary logistical arrangements for rapid pickup by the Air Force in the event of a failure in civil flight operations from Israel. “In the event of a further deterioration of the situation, the Bundeswehr’s military evacuation unit would be ready.”
The measures now taken include the deployment of joint crisis support teams from the Foreign Office with soldiers from the Bundeswehr to Israel and surrounding countries.
In recent years, the federal government has sent Air Force aircraft and heavily armed soldiers several times to fly German citizens and other people in need of protection out of war zones. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had already made it clear that this would now be fundamentally possible in the event of an escalation in Israel.
Also today special flights to Germany
On Thursday, hundreds of Germans were brought home from Israel on four special Lufthansa flights. The first special plane from Tel Aviv landed at Frankfurt Airport on Thursday evening with 370 passengers. Another plane followed later. Two planes also landed in Munich. Four more special flights are planned for today.
According to the Foreign Office, a total of 950 Germans and their relatives left Israel on Thursday – in addition to the special flights, a ferry to Cyprus was organized as another option. A spokesman said that around 5,000 people had been put on the crisis list of the German embassy in Israel. But he couldn’t say whether all these people wanted to leave. In total, there are more than 100,000 German citizens in Israel, many with dual citizenship.
criticism of Crisis management the Federal Government
There was widespread criticism of the organization of the repatriations. Affected Germans reported that the hotlines used to book special flights were extremely overloaded. The ARD Studio Tel Aviv quotes a German woman who spent hours on the phone. “I tried it over 250 times,” she said.
The foreign policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Jürgen Hardt, also criticized the federal government. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock “tried to outsource the problem of leaving the country to Lufthansa with as little effort as possible. The result is ongoing chaos,” said Hardt. It is time for her to act and make the process a top priority.
Baerbock rejects criticism
In the ZDF program “Maybrit Illner,” Baerbock rejected the accusations of not having done enough. She referred to the difficult situation on site and the relatively high number of 100,000 Germans and dual nationals in Israel. If everyone who wanted to leave the country had been asked to go to the airport, there would have been “absolute chaos,” said Baerbock.
“But I also know what the German embassy on site did from day one.” She was in contact with the Icelandic Foreign Minister so that some German school classes could travel via Iceland on flights.
Lufthansa extends flight stop until October 22nd
Meanwhile, the Lufthansa Group announced that it would suspend regular flight operations to Israel until October 22nd. The airlines – in addition to the main brand Lufthansa, this concerns Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines – decided to do this due to the situation, which continues to be unclear. “Safety is the top priority for the Lufthansa Group airlines.”