German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has urged an end to violence in the Middle East as he joined leaders around the world in commemorating one year since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
It was Germany’s responsibility to support Israel when the Jews’ homeland was attacked, Steinmeier will say in a speech at a memorial service in Berlin later on Monday, in a transcript seen in advance by dpa.
However, he added that it was also clear that the “principles that guide us are encountering a painful and contradictory reality” in the fighting that has since erupted in the Middle East.
“This war has already killed too many people and caused too much suffering – for Israelis and Palestinians, and now for the people of Lebanon,” Steinmeier said.
“For a year now, people in Gaza have also been experiencing enormous suffering every day.”
Many have lost their lives, many have to flee again and again, and are hungry and sick, the German president said.
“Questions are being asked more loudly and urgently, and the public debate is becoming more intense – less about whether Israel has the right to defend itself, and more about where the limits of the right to defend itself lie.”
“I would like to see an end to the deaths in the Middle East, but I would like to campaign against relying on simple, simplistic advice in a desperate situation,” Steinmeier said. “The deaths in Gaza, the hunger and destruction would not have happened without the attack and massacres of October 7 last year.”
