German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, after the conversation with King Abdullah of Jordan in Aqaba, that a large number of civilian victims, as a result of a possible Israeli attack on the town of Rafah in Gaza, will make it very difficult to achieve regional peace.
He announced that it will be one of the main topics in the conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, later today as part of Scholz’s visit to the region.
The hastily arranged talks were preceded by Netanyahu’s approval of the Rafah offensive plan on Friday, according to Israeli media.
Soltz assessed that a long-term ceasefire should now be ensured, the agencies reported.
“That would allow us to prevent such a ground offensive from happening,” the German chancellor said.
When asked if he was ready to put pressure on Netanyahu to stop the attack, Scholz replied that it is very clear that everything must be done to prevent the situation from becoming worse than it is.
“Israel has every right to defend itself. At the same time, it cannot be that those in Gaza who fled to Rafah are under direct threat from every military action and operation that is undertaken there,” said Scholz.
The Israeli army plans to enter Rafah to supposedly eliminate the last stronghold of Hamas.
Israel believes some hostages and Hamas leaders are in Rafah. In February, Israeli special forces freed two Israeli hostages from an apartment in that city.
More than half of Gaza’s residents fled to Rafah during the war sparked by Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7.
The ensuing offensive on Gaza displaced most of its 2.3 million inhabitants, killed thousands of civilians, and resulted in shortages of food, water and medicine.
Scholz did not directly answer the question of whether Germany would react to a large-scale offensive in Rafah, for example by limiting the export of German weapons to Israel.
Germany is one of Israel’s most loyal allies, along with the US, and constantly supports that country’s right to defend itself and emphasizes Germany’s duty to stand by it, as a sign of atonement for the Nazi Holocaust in the last century, in which six million Jews were killed, Beta news agency reports.
