Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) has called on Israelis and Palestinians to overcome their differences. The current mutual blame game will not go any further, said Baerbock at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos. “The only way out of this is a two-state solution,” Baerbock said in English during a discussion with other participants. The current war is a “disaster” not only for Israelis and Palestinians, but for “the entire world.”
Baerbock recalled that the majority of the hostages kidnapped by the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas on October 7th were still in the hands of the Islamists – including a one-year-old child. Children would also suffer on the Palestinian side. “It’s about saving these children.” Baerbock also called on other countries to demand that Hamas release the more than a hundred hostages. The minister reiterated Israel’s right to self-defense and called on Hamas to lay down its arms. She appealed to Israel to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible in its war in the Gaza Strip and to open more border crossings to the narrow coastal strip in order to be able to provide more humanitarian aid to the population.