By Cindy Riechau, dpa I Friday, April 19, 2024
BERLIN – Germany’s Foreign Office is disputing as “misleading” an Israeli media report about a heated argument between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock over the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“Key points in this account of the hour long meeting between Foreign Minister Baerbock and Prime Minister Netanyahu are wrong and misleading,” the Foreign Office wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday.
The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, made the same statement without offering specifics.
A journalist from the Israeli TV station Channel 13 had previously reported that Baerbock reacted negatively when shown footage from the Gaza Strip depicting markets filled with food during a meeting in Israel on Wednesday.
Baerbock reportedly responded by pointing out widespread hunger in Gaza 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 also of people on the beach, as there were no cases of hunger there.
According to the Channel 13 report, Baerbock advised him not to show the pictures as they did not correspond to the reality in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu, 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, for example, the Nazis had a film crew shoot a propaganda film with scenes of everyday life in the Warsaw ghetto, where Jews were forced to live in abysmal conditions.
Baerbock reportedly asked Netanyahu whether he was accusing doctors working in Gaza, as well as the international media, of lying about the situation.
The images of the market stalls filled with fruit and vegetables were published this week by COGAT, an Israeli agency within the Defence Ministry responsible for contacts with the Palestinian Territories and humanitarian aid.
The images show markets in the north of the coastal area, which is particularly affected by food shortages. According to COGAT and aid organizations, some food recently arrived in the area, although aid workers and residents say it remains far from enough.
The images of several Palestinians bathing on the beach at Deir al-Balah in the centre of the Gaza Strip, which Netanyahu also mentioned at his meeting with Baerbock, recently went viral on the internet and in the Israeli media.
Gazans told dpa that the people were cooling off in the sea in view of the current high temperatures and also showering there due to the lack of water in Gaza.
“I have no fans, air conditioning or electricity with which we could cope with this situation,” said Areej Nassar, who is staying in a tent in Deir al-Balah.
During the day, the temperatures in the tent are unbearable, which is why she and her young children bathe in the sea. She also washes the family’s clothes there, she said.
Al-Balah said she fears disease due to the lack of clean water.
“The people outside think that we are enjoying the sea water,” 55-year-old Samir al-Ayoubi told dpa. “We have to shower every day and we can only find water in the sea.”
The father of five has pitched his tent on the shore of the beach after fleeing the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to escape a planned Israeli military assault.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the rate of food trucks entering the Gaza Strip in March and April was only half as high as in January.
“At the moment, too few trucks are still coming in, there are still long waiting times at the checkpoints and the ongoing fighting does not allow for the safe distribution of aid throughout the country,” said Martin Frick, head of the Berlin office of the UN World Food Programme.
Baerbock said during her visit to Israel on Wednesday that there was still not enough aid reaching the area, especially via important land crossings from Israel. She once again called for an increase in aid deliveries and the safe distribution of goods on the ground.
The United States, Israel’s most important ally, also recently demanded that Israel rapidly expand the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza. In response, the Israeli war Cabinet decided at the beginning of April to open the Erez border crossing in the north of the coastal region and temporarily open the port of Ashdod for aid deliveries.
Israel argues that there is enough aid coming into the Gaza Strip and that supply problems are due to issues with the distribution of food on the ground.
