Trittin urges Israel to change course in Gaza war
Trittin warns Israel of the loss of international support in the fight against Hamas. To prevent this, he calls for compliance with international law. In order to guarantee this, the Israeli government must rethink the Gaza war.
Jürgen Trittin, foreign policy spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag, has called on Israel to change course in the Gaza war. "We are clearly on Israel's side," Trittin told the newspapers of the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. "But Israel must understand that it is in the process of losing more and more support."
"We must prevent this," said Trittin after the UN General Assembly passed a resolution on Tuesday calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. "Because we need these supporters in order to achieve a sustainable solution to the conflict." It is therefore important that Israel complies with international law when exercising its right to self-defense, Trittin warned. "The escalating settler violence in the West Bank does not fit in with this, nor does the fact that the people in Gaza can no longer be supplied. This requires more open border crossings and humanitarian interruptions to the fighting."
US President Joe Biden had already warned on Tuesday that Israel was losing international support in the face of "indiscriminate" bombardments of the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attack on October 7. Also on Tuesday, 153 of the 193 UN member states at the United Nations General Assembly in New York voted in favor of a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Ten states - including Israel and the USA - voted against, 23 states abstained, including Germany.
Trittin defended the German government's decision to abstain from the vote. "The decision for Germany to abstain was difficult, but it is a logical one," said the Green MP, who will retire from the Bundestag in January after 25 years. "If you can negotiate something into a resolution, such as the release of the hostages, you can't vote no," said Trittin, explaining his decision. "Otherwise you can never negotiate anything into it again. But we also cannot agree if the Hamas attack is not condemned as terror."
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Source: www.ntv.de
