After days of waiting, the first Germans and their relatives landed back home in an action organized by the Foreign Office. Meanwhile, the Bundeswehr is taking additional precautions.
The Bundeswehr is preparing to be able to bring German citizens from Israel to Germany if necessary. In coordination with the Foreign Office, “preparatory preventive measures” had been initiated in view of the recent spiral of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the Defense Ministry announced last night. “In the event of a further deterioration of the situation, the Bundeswehr military evacuation unit would be ready,” it said.
The measures are intended to ensure “that the federal government has taken all the necessary logistical precautions for rapid pickup by the Air Force in the event of a failure of civil flight operations from Israel.”
Germans returned with Lufthansa special flights
Meanwhile, hundreds of Germans have already returned home on four special Lufthansa flights. The first special plane from Tel Aviv landed at Frankfurt Airport yesterday evening with 370 passengers. Another plane followed later. Two planes also landed in Munich. Four more special flights were planned for this Friday. However, the Union criticized the Foreign Office’s organization of the campaign.
The Foreign Office said that more than 660 German citizens and their family members were able to leave the country yesterday with the first three of the four special flights. A total of 950 Germans and their relatives left Israel that day – in addition to the special flights, a ferry to Cyprus was organized as another option.
Baerbock: Problems when leaving the country are “isolated cases”
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) rejected allegations that she had not done enough to ensure that Germans could leave Israel quickly. “It’s always the case that there are individual cases where some people rightly say that it didn’t happen quickly enough,” she said yesterday on the ZDF program “Maybrit Illner”. “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.
The Green politician referred to the difficult situation on site and the relatively high number of around 100,000 Germans and dual nationals in Israel. “It’s not like in a normal situation where everyone can go to the airport first and then we see who gets on which plane. Instead, the Israelis – rightly – only allow people who have a plane ticket onto the airport grounds “, she said. If everyone who wanted to leave the country had been asked to go to the airport, “absolute chaos” would have ensued.
“Vacancies available at any time”
There were still free seats on the commercial flights, on the special Lufthansa flights, on the buses offered to Jordan and on the ship that takes those wishing to leave Israel to Cyprus, said Baerbock. Not every individual case was probably handled as well as one would have hoped. “But there were always free places to get out of Israel.”
Germans who were registered on the Federal Foreign Office’s crisis information precautionary list were able to register for the flights. Lufthansa had agreed to offer up to four flights from Tel Aviv yesterday and today: two each to Frankfurt and Munich. The departure times on both days were 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. (local time). The flights were expected to have a total capacity of around 1,000 people per day.
Relief for returnees
The returned passengers expressed relief after their arrival, and some were received by relatives. Christoph Schaefer from Erbendorf, Bavaria, said he was very relieved to no longer have to expect rocket attacks. He went to Israel as a vacationer and was supposed to fly back on Sunday. “Tel Aviv was spared from the biggest impacts,” he reported. But he did notice individual impacts. “A rocket hit an apartment 200 meters away from us.” There were five injured.
Schaefer reported problems registering for the return flight. The telephone line was always busy. “But after 17 attempts, sometime around 5 a.m., I did it,” he said. The tourist Marlene Knüpfer was also happy to be back in the Federal Republic. “It was stressful, especially with all the shocks that you constantly felt,” she said. In total there were ten alarms.
A returnee in Frankfurt said: “I hope I don’t hear the sirens again for a long time.” He wasn’t afraid for his life, “but there were 70 or 80 attacks, that was really getting on his nerves,” he said about his time in Jerusalem and northern Israel. A German student was relieved to be safe, but seemed depressed at the thought of his two Israeli roommates in Tel Aviv. One of his best friends was drafted into the military and was somewhere in southern Israel. “I know that in the next few days I will repeatedly search the lists with the names of the fallen on the Internet.”
The Foreign Office organizes departure by ferry
The German Foreign Ministry said that after some airlines had stopped flights, it had ensured that special Lufthansa flights were flying to Israel again. At the same time it was emphasized: “We are continuing to work on options for leaving the country – by plane, by bus, by ship.” German citizens were informed about this via the so-called Elefand system – the ministry’s crisis preparedness list.
According to a so-called compatriot letter from the German embassy in Israel, a fee of 300 euros per person is due to take part in the special flights. The money is to be collected when booking via a Lufthansa hotline on behalf of the German Foreign Ministry. According to dpa information, Lufthansa charges 550 euros per person, and the state covers 250 euros.
Union politician Hardt: “Unworthy chaos”
The foreign policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Jürgen Hardt (CDU), criticized the organization of the special flights. The Germans’ departure is making slow progress. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) “tried to outsource the problem of leaving the country to Lufthansa with as little effort as possible. The result is ongoing chaos,” Hardt told the German Press Agency. It is time for her to “act and make the process a top priority.”
His parliamentary group colleague, defense policy spokesman Florian Hahn, said: “The solution, as we as the CDU/CSU parliamentary group have already suggested, would be simple: Our air force is and was ready to provide immediate support. Anyone for ideological reasons If you don’t want to resort to the obvious and right solutions, it’s unsuitable for crisis management.”
Hardt criticized the fact that the hotline for the few flights was constantly busy and that people sometimes had phone bills in the four-digit range due to cell phone calls from Israel that lasted for hours. With regard to advance payment using a credit card number given over the phone, the CDU politician said: “It couldn’t be more impractical, especially for school classes, children and old people.” In addition, there is apparently no prioritization of people for the flights, even though the Germans there have specifically registered on the Foreign Office lists. “The first-come, first-served principle suits business people much more than families with children who cannot wait on the hotline continuously and at all times.”
The left-wing Bundestag member Cornelia Möhring criticized that eight flights were far from enough to fly out everyone who wanted to leave the country. The federal government must make every effort “to fly people with German citizenship out of the war zone as quickly as possible.”