3/20/
2025
Even before the break of the ceasefire, the complete blockade of all aid deliveries in the Gaza Strip, which Israel had been on the 2nd. March, the already catastrophic situation of the population dramatically worsened. As UN emergency aid coordinator Tom Fletcher confirmed on Tuesday, no food, medicine, fuel and cooking gas have been entering the sealed off area for two and a half weeks. Injured and sick people can only be partially treated by medically; because desalination plants are out of service, there is less and less clean water available. The WHO warns once again that apart from the rampant food shortage, there is a threatening spread of epidemics. 1] As Fletcher states, it violates international law to systematically withhold food, water and medicine from the civilian population: "This must be stopped immediately." At the beginning of the week, attention had been drawn to attention that British Foreign Minister David Lammy had publicly confirmed for the first time that Israel was openly violating international law by completely blocking aid deliveries to Gaza.[ 2] A corresponding official classification of the Israeli blockade is not known from Berlin. However, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also put Lammy's statement into perspective again in London. 3]
On Tuesday, Israel also broke the ceasefire in the Gaza war - on the grounds that Hamas was not ready to comply with its recent demands for the immediate release of all hostages while departing from the negotiated ceasefire conditions. Israel had first delayed the negotiations set out in the ceasefire agreement for weeks and then stopped with the resumption of air strikes. The latter was done according to a report by the Wall Street Journal with the consent of US President Donald Trump, who has stated that he wants to build luxury resorts on the rubble of the destroyed Gaza Strip after the expulsion of the Palestinian population. 4] In choosing their targets for the air raids, the Israeli armed forces took into see the fact that during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Muslim families gather after sunset to break the fast. Apparently, places where the families of leading Hamas officials had gathered were deliberately bombed. Observers thus explain the high number of women and children among the fatalities. 5] A total of more than 400 Palestinians died. The Palestinian authorities had already reported the number of Palestinian fatalities since the beginning of the war at around 48,000.
Against the resumption of the air raids, numerous members of the hostages and their supporters took to the streets in Israel on Tuesday and demanded an immediate end to the bombing. Horrified reactions came from the United Nations. UN Secretary-General António Guterres lamented the "unbearable level of suffering" inflicted on the population of the Gaza Strip.[ 6] UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk said he was "horrified" by the airstrikes and called for an immediate cessation.[ 7] In the meantime, the EU foreign affairs representative Kaja Kalla has also protested and declared to Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar that the renewed air strikes were "unacceptable". 8] Israel's extreme right reacted with praise for the attacks. Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionists Party said the goal, because of which he remained in the government, had been achieved. The chairman of the Jewish Strength Party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said that he now has the conditions to return to the Israeli government. 9] Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was content with the non-binding statement that she pleaded for "proportionality" and the preservation of international law. 10]
It was only at the end of last week that it became known that Israeli and American authorities were specifically pushing forward the search for countries to which they could forcibly deport the population of the Gaza Strip, more than two million people, in order to realize the plans of the Trump clan to build luxury resorts in Gaza. For example, the AP news agency reported that representatives of both states had extended their feelers to Somalia and into Somaliland, which was split from it; US agencies in Sudan had also expressed their interest in using the country as a deportation destination for the Palestinians. 11] Bodies in Sudan confirmed this; according to this, they received the first offers of military support in the Sudanese civil war even before Trump took office, should they agree to take in the deported Palestinians. Somalia and Somaliland dispute that they have held official talks. The White House confirms that Trump is still holding on to the deportation plans. 12] These come from Israel's extreme right, which they propagate under the cynical term "voluntary emigration". One of their supporters has long been Finance Minister Smotrich. At the moment, they are finding their way into Israeli and US government policies.
The German government has always supported the Israeli war-leasin in the core and at best exercised cautious, always non-binding maneuver criticism of some excesses. In addition, she personally defends Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom proceedings are underway before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The alleged future Chancellor Friedrich Merz has promised to invite Netanyahu to Germany without implementing the ICC arrest warrant imposed on him. The scientific services of the Bundestag have now confirmed that this would be illegal. 13] Experts point out that there are viable ways to do this - such as "interphence in the administrative process to implement the arrest and transfer" - but that this would only be possible in an open violation of the law. 14] If the entire population of the Gaza Strip were actually forced to be deported, the German government would also become an accomplice in another mass crime by holding on to its previous course.
It is currently becoming apparent that the previous perspective, which was clearly recognizable at the time of the Biden administration, that Germany could gain a stronger influence in the Middle East in cooperation with Israel [15], may be breaking down. If the Trump clan were to actually control a depopulated Gaza strip - this in cooperation with an extreme right-wing Israeli government - then the prospects for a stronger German position in the region would be quite slim; at least as long as the federal government, as is currently the case, is thinking about entering into an open conflict with the Trump administration (german-foreign-policy.com reported [16]). Whether this will lead to any course corrections in Berlin is not yet foreseeable.
[1] Ephrem Kossaify: UN humanitarian chief appeals for aid access as Gaza faces 'total' blockade. arabnews.com 18.03.2025.
[2] George Grylls: Israel is breaking international law in Gaza, UK says for first time. thetimes.com 17.03.2025.
[3] Noah Keate: UK rows back on claim Israel's Gaza aid blockade is illegal. politico.eu 18.03.2025.
[4] Feliz Solomon, Abeer Ayyoub, Carrie Keller-Lynn: Israeli Strikes Kill Hundreds, Tipping Gaza Back Toward War. wsj.com 18.03.2025.
[5] Christian Meier: The government no longer wants to hear anything from the hostage families. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19.03.2025.
[6] Jennifer Rankin, Oliver Holmes: World leaders express outrage at Israel's renewed bombing of Gaza civilians. theguardian.com 18.03.2025.
[7] Comment by UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. ochr.org 18.03.2025.
[8] Nava Freiberg: EU tells Israel renewed fighting in Gaza is 'unacceptable'. timesofisrael.com 19.03.2025.
[9] Christian Meier: The government no longer wants to hear anything from the hostage families. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19.03.2025.
[10] Hundreds of deaths in airstrikes. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19.03.2025.
[11], [12] Josef Federman, Matthew Lee, Samy Magdy: US and Israel look to Africa for moving Palestinians uprooted from Gaza. apnews.com 14.03.2025.
[13] Pauline Jäckels: Scientific service: Netanyahu should be arrested. nd-aktuell.de 03/17/205.
[14] Max Kolter: Free escort with the crowbar. lto.de 26.02.2025.
[15] See s. on this EU wants "key role in the Middle East" and "In the national interest of Germany".
[16] S. to this drone wall over the NATO eastern flank.