German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will travel to Israel Sunday for her fourth visit since the outbreak of the Gaza war, a ministry spokesman said.
Annalena Baerbock © Mena Today
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will travel to Israel Sunday for her fourth visit since the outbreak of the Gaza war, a ministry spokesman said.
Baerbock will hold talks with Israel's new Foreign Minister Israel Katz, as well as President Isaac Herzog, foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a regular press conference on Friday.
She will also meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.
Baerbock will subsequently travel to Egypt to meet with her counterpart Sameh Shoukry and also plans to visit Lebanon.
The talks would focus on the "dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank and the extremely volatile situation on the Israel-Lebanon border," as well as efforts to secure the release of more Hamas hostages, Fischer said.
Baerbock said at a Berlin press conference on Friday that the Israelis and Palestinians would "only be able to live side by side in peace if the security of the one means the security of the other."
"Our position on the so-called day after is very clear," she said, speaking alongside her counterpart from Luxembourg.
"There must be no occupation of the Gaza Strip, no expulsions and no reduction in the size of the territory. And at the same time there must be no more danger to Israel from the Gaza Strip," Baerbock said.
Fears have grown that the conflict between Israel and Hamas could spread after one of the militant group's leaders was assassinated in the Beirut suburbs.
In addition to the killing, widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, the Israeli army has for months traded tit-for-tat fire across the border with Hezbollah militants.
The risk of escalation was "very real," Fischer said. Germany on Wednesday urged its citizens to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.
Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time on Saturday in a final overshadowed by five countries' boycott over Gaza, claiming a dramatic victory despite another big public vote for Israel that again secured it second place.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam delivered his sharpest rebuke yet of Hezbollah on Friday, urging the Iran-backed group to abandon what he called "absurd adventures in service of foreign interests" and stop dressing up "deaths, destruction and displacement" as victories.
A senior Hamas official told Reuters on Saturday that the chief of the group's military wing had died, a day after Israel said that it had carried out airstrikes targeting him.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.