diplomacy
Dispute between Baerbock and Netanyahu? – AA disagrees
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Wednesday. photo
© Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
Netanyahu is said to have shown the German Foreign Minister footage of a market filled with food in Gaza during a meeting. According to one report, this led to an argument.
The Foreign Office has a report on a dispute between the Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the situation in the Gaza Strip as misleading. The Federal Foreign Office wrote on Friday on the platform X (formerly Twitter) that key points in the presentation of the two-hour meeting on Wednesday were incorrect. The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, made the same statement.
A journalist from the Israeli TV station Channel 13 had previously reported on X about a difficult meeting between Baerbock and Netanyahu. The reason is said to have been that Baerbock was shown photos from the Gaza Strip showing markets filled with food. The Green politician then pointed out the hunger of the people in the coastal area and offered to show Netanyahu pictures of starving children on her cell phone.
Netanyahu is said to have replied that she should look at photos of the markets and people on the beach; there were no cases of hunger there. According to the report, Baerbock advised him not to show the pictures because they did not correspond to the reality in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu responds with a Nazi comparison
Israel’s head of government, in turn, is said to have loudly replied that the photos were real and that Israel was not showing an invented reality like the Nazis. In 1942, the Nazis had a film crew make a propaganda film with staged scenes of everyday life in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Baerbock is said to have then asked Netanyahu whether he wanted to say that doctors in the Gaza Strip and international media were not reporting the truth.
Photos of market stalls filled with fruit and vegetables
The Israeli Cogat authority, which is responsible for contacts with the Palestinians and humanitarian aid, published the photos of the market stalls filled with fruit and vegetables a few days ago. They show markets in the north of the coastal area, which is particularly affected by the food shortage. According to aid organizations and Cogat, some aid has recently arrived there. According to helpers and residents, these are still far from enough.
However, according to the World Food Program (WFP), the overall rate of food trucks entering the Gaza Strip in March and April was only half of what it was in January. “At the moment there are still too few trucks coming in, there are still long waiting times at the checkpoints and the ongoing fighting does not allow for the safe, widespread distribution of aid,” said the head of the Berlin office of the UN World Food Program, Martin Frick. But there is still not enough help reaching the area, especially via the important land route, said Baerbock on Wednesday during her visit to Israel. She once again called for an expansion of aid deliveries and a safe distribution of goods locally.
USA calls on Israel for more humanitarian aid
In view of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, the USA recently called on its ally Israel to quickly expand humanitarian aid for the civilian population. The Israeli war cabinet then decided at the beginning of April to open the Erez border crossing in the north of the coastal area and temporarily the port of Ashdod for aid deliveries.
Israel argues that there is enough help coming to the Gaza Strip, but that the problem is the distribution of food there.
The photographs of several Palestinians bathing on the beach of Dair al-Balah in the center of the Gaza Strip, which Netanyahu also spoke about during his meeting with Baerbock, recently spread online and in the Israeli media. Eyewitnesses told the German Press Agency that they were cooling off in the sea given the currently high temperatures and were also taking a shower there because of the lack of water.
Fear of disease
“I have no fans, air conditioning or electricity to deal with this situation,” said Palestinian Arij Nassar, who is sheltering in a tent in the central Gaza town. During the day the temperatures in the tent are unbearable. So she and her little children bathed in the sea. She also washes the family’s clothes there. Because of the lack of water, the woman is afraid of illness.
“The people outside think that we are enjoying the sea water,” said 55-year-old Samir al-Ajubi to dpa. But bathing is largely due to external circumstances. “We have to shower every day and we can only find water in the sea.” The father of five pitched his tent on the shore of the beach. He had previously fled the southern city of Rafah in the coastal region because of the threat of an Israeli offensive.
1.5 Palestinians live in the most difficult conditions
As a result of the Gaza war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to leave the north of the Gaza Strip towards the south. According to estimates by UN organizations, around 1.5 of the 2.2 million Palestinians live in the most difficult conditions in Rafah.
Baerbock met, among others, Netanyahu and President Izchak Herzog on her seventh visit to Israel on Wednesday.