How committed is Germany to Israel's security? Only time will tell

Unlike what most Israelis believe, it was not former conservative German chancellor Angela Merkel who was the first to declare that Israel’s existence and security are part of Germany’s reason of state (Staatsräson) or higher national interest.

It was one of the previous leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD), Rudolf Dressler, who, between 2000 and 2005, served as his country’s ambassador to Israel. “The secured existence of Israel is within Germany’s national interest and therefore is part of our Staatsräson,” wrote Dressler in an article published in April 2005, months before Merkel was elected as chancellor.

During Dressler’s time as ambassador to Israel, Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security faced some serious challenges. Israel’s military efforts to break down the terrorist wave of the Second Intifada, which included IDF operations in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, caused Germany to stop the supply of weapon components to Israel.

The then-left SPD-Green government blamed the halt to the deliveries on internal administrative obstacles. Then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder found himself under political pressure and declared during a debate at the Bundestag on April 24, 2002, “I want to state clearly – Israel receives what it needed for the maintenance of its security, and it receives it when it is needed.”

Schröder, however, waited until the very last days of his chancellorship in November 2005 before he approved selling Israel two more submarines, in addition to the three already supplied by his predecessor Helmut Kohl.

German dedication for Israeli security

Despite Israeli public misperception, it was not in her speech at the Knesset in March 2008, celebrating Israel’s 60 years of existence, that Merkel first included Israel’s existence and security in Germany’s reason of state. She had already said it a few months before in a speech before the UN General Assembly in New York and on other occasions. However, it was her historic speech at the Knesset – the first of a foreign head of government and not of a foreign president – that is generally remembered as the moment such an official commitment to Israel was made by an acting chancellor.

In Germany, it was not received without internal debate, as the vague formulation of this commitment left a vast space for different interpretations. German high officials, including former president Joachim Gauck and present President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, while serving as Merkel’s foreign minister, did their best to reduce the meaning of the commitment.

The Israeli side was content with the ambiguous wording of Merkel’s promise. “It’s best that we don’t ask what it includes, so that we shall not get clear answers,” Israeli diplomats said at the time, adding that “Israel will never ask Germany to send soldiers to defend it.”

However, this has already happened: in 2006, after the Second Lebanon War, Germany was asked by Israel to send troops to Lebanon as part of the extended UNIFIL force. As committed to Israel’s existence and security as Merkel was, she also used holding up military sales to Israel (submarines) as a tool for political pressure on Israel’s government.

Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year forced another SPD-led government to consider its commitment to Israel’s security. Keeping it as part of Germany’s “Staatsräson” is the declared policy of Olaf Scholz’s SPD-Greens-Liberals center-left coalition. However, again, the extension of Israel’s military response in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon brought the government in Berlin to delay approving the supply of weapons to Israel.

Scholz’s government sees itself attacked on two fronts because of weapons supply to Israel: internally there is growing pressure within the left public opinion to stop any military support to Israel. In the international arena, Germany found itself recently at the International Court of Justice, as the pro-Palestinian government of Nicaragua tried to force Berlin to stop delivering weapons to Israel, as this activity violates the International Genocide Convention, according to the Nicaraguans.

The ICJ rejected the demand, but the legal procedure reinforced the position of those in the German cabinet who were opposed to “non-defensive” weapon supplies to Israel.

According to an official answer to a parliamentary information request presented by the left party BSW – a rising power in German politics, which is extremely opposed to selling weapons to Israel and accuses the Jewish state of committing war crimes – the German government admitted that in 2024 there has been a drastic cut in approving military sales to Israel.

Earlier in October, the Bundestag dedicated a special debate session to the October 7 attack on Israel. President Steinmeier and Israel’s ambassador in Berlin, Ron Prosor, honored the debate with their presence. However, the commemorative event quickly turned into a political battle, as the head of the opposition, conservative Friedrich Merz, accused Scholz’s government of not fulfilling Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security by not approving weapons requests from Israel.

The accusation was made after a representative of the Green Party, Lamya Kaddor, asked her colleagues “not to lose their humanity” and to consider the suffering on both sides. “October 7 also stands for the suffering of the people in Gaza, in the West Bank, and Lebanon,” she emphasized.

She further made the point that Germany’s Staatsräson commitment is not unconditional support of Israel and shouldn’t be granted to an Israeli government that includes in its ranks “right-wing extremists with radical plans.”

The question of German commitment to Israel’s existence and security now remains unclear. Germany decides what interests and governments best serve Israel. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock came up with another condition and tied Israel’s right to defend itself to humanitarian international law.

“The West Bank and Lebanon should not look like another Gaza,” she warned. Rolf Mützenich, chairman of the ruling SPD group in the Bundestag, demanded that Israel “respect the international war law.”

Only as he saw that the situation was slowly getting out of control did Chancellor Scholz intervene in the heated debate and declare: “We did not decide not to supply weapons; we supplied weapons, and we shall do so. This is the government’s position. We took a decision that will enable us to renew supplies soon, and you will all see that the accusations [regarding this matter] are false.”

As decisions on weapons exports are made secretly in the German defense cabinet, patience is needed to see to what extent Germany is committed to Israel’s existence and security.