We are shocked to see how the current Israeli government has been escalating the war against the Palestinians for 19 months, preparing – as it has been announced – a major expulsion and thus massively disregarding human rights and international law.
Beyond proportionality
After the terrible massacre committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, Israel had the right to defend itself. However, the right to self-defence is clearly limited by international law and the obligation to respect human rights. It has become apparent that in this conflict, Israel is not fulfilling its obligations under international law to respect the principle of proportionality in all its actions and reactions, to protect the civilian population, and to ensure that basic humanitarian needs are met at all times:
The Gaza Strip has been largely destroyed since the beginning of the war. 1.9 million people – 90 per cent of Gaza’s population – have been displaced (Source). More than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed (OCHA, 11 June 2025), including 16,000 children, according to UNRWA chief Rose (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5 June 2025). An urgent warning issued by the FAO on 12 May 2025 in response to the latest IPC classification revealed that almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip, i.e. nearly 2.1 million people, is at critical risk of starvation after 19 months of conflict, mass displacement, and severe restrictions on humanitarian assistance. The establishment of a private aid infrastructure does not work properly and violates the rules for humanitarian aid. In addition, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while trying to obtain food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) (Source). Excluding all impartial aid organisations, this highly controversial private foundation set up by the USA and Israel sporadically distributes aid supplies at four of the 400 distribution centres that operated in Gaza before October 2023. These supplies are far from sufficient to meet the needs of the population.
The accusation that both Hamas and the Israeli government have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity was also the reason given by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri Deif (Mohammed Deif) on 21 November 2024.
Human rights apply to everyone. They are universal. Or as the late Margot Friedländer put it: ‘There is no Christian blood, no Jewish blood, no Muslim blood. There is only human blood.’ There are no first or second-class people. We consider the protection of every human being’s human dignity to be the core of the German raison d’état (Staatsräson).
Will the German government’s verbal change of course be followed by a change of action?
The German government’s long and loud silence has raised doubts about Germany’s credibility as a champion of human rights, particularly in many countries of the Global South. It is also increasingly met with incomprehension among the German population (Source). At the end of May, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz heralded a – so far verbal – paradigm shift on the part of the German government in view of the enormous escalation that seems to lead to the Gaza Strip being cleared and rendered uninhabitable. He made it clear that it is no longer apparent how ‘the massive military strikes by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip … serve the goal of fighting terror and freeing the hostages.’
In her speech at the opening of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference 2025 on 2 June, Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Reem Alabali Radovan further substantiated the new German government’s criticism and called for an ‘immediate ceasefire’. According to her, ‘there cannot and must not be a military objective that justifies children starving, that justifies mothers being unable to treat their injured children, or entire families being buried under rubble. No political strategy can justify the blocking of humanitarian aid. The Israeli government must immediately and permanently allow access for humanitarian organizations. ... An immediate ceasefire is urgently needed.’
Reem Alabali Radovan also made it clear that ‘when access to humanitarian supplies is permanently blocked – when international law is ignored – we cannot simply return to business as usual. We must talk about the consequences.’
We not only hope for the consequences announced by the German government – we expect them now. This is also necessary to make sure that the German government does not undermine its credibility in the fight for international law and human rights.
From talking to acting
Germanwatch is convinced that adhering to clear rules for the protection of human rights and international law can play an important role to help to prevent future spirals of violence and secure Israel’s right to exist. If these necessary rules are grossly disregarded, the response has to go beyond words. The German government must now do everything in its power to end the violence in Gaza, guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid and supplies, and prevent both the further destruction of homes and health infrastructure and the planning of expulsions.
It is a positive step that Germany was among the 149 states that adopted a resolution on Gaza by an overwhelming majority in the UN General Assembly on 18 June 2025. This resolution calls for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire, the release of the hostages, and the resumption of humanitarian aid to avert the famine (Source, Source).
In addition, we believe that the federal government should:
- Do everything in its power to enable free access to aid supplies, as called for in the General Assembly resolution.
- Actively push for and work towards an immediate ceasefire together with other EU states.
- Recognise a Palestinian state in order to pave the way for a two-state solution despite decades of illegal occupation, expulsion, and violence against Palestinians.
- Follow the 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law by ‘refrain[ing] from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behaviour, that they would be used to violate international law.’ (Source) Based on these principles, it is necessary to review the authorisation for exports to Israel of weapons of war that can be used in Gaza (Source). This is also urgently necessary in order to rule out German complicity in violations of international law.
- Express respect and support for the work of the International Criminal Court and all its instruments. This means that arrest warrants must be executed in Germany.
- Review the EU’s partnership agreement with Israel, which came into effect in 2000. One of its basic principles is that relations between the contracting parties are based on respect for human rights. The counter-argument that channels of dialogue should be kept open loses its relevance if the talks are ineffective over a longer period of time.
- Reinforce the protection of Jews in Germany and work against antisemitism as a government and society.
- Draw consequences from Michael O’Flaherty’s criticism of the German government, voiced on 6 June 2025. According to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the liberties to protest peacefully and to express one’s own opinion were repeatedly and in various ways not guaranteed in the context of the Gaza conflict.
At the same time, we expect the German government to do everything it can to persuade Hamas to release the hostages. Anyone who uses civilians as human shields by utilising hospitals, schools, or residential buildings to accommodate military infrastructure is accepting civilian casualties among the Palestinian population.
(*) Many examples can be found here.
