Will growing public opinion force Germany to suspend arms sales to Israel?

Israel's brutal military offensive in Gaza, open disregard for international law and brazen genocidal statements of its leaders are pushing Germany's long-standing “special responsibility” towards the country to the very edge.

In recent weeks, Berlin has come under intense domestic and international pressure to curtail its unrelenting support for Tel Aviv and suspend arms sales to the Israeli state, which has killed nearly 34,000 people in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza in just under seven months.

Human rights lawyers in Berlin filed an urgent appeal against the German government's weapons exports to Israel, saying that German weapons were being used to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza – which has been turned into a dystopian wasteland by Israel’s bombs and bullets.

Buoyed by a court in the Netherlands blocking all Dutch exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, Armaghan Naghipour, a lawyer representing the Berlin group said, "We are of the legal opinion that there is reason to believe that Germany‘s granting of war weapons to Israel violates or at least endangers the fulfilment of Germany’s international legal obligations".

Adding to the pressure, Nicaragua took Germany to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “facilitating genocide in Gaza” and pleading with the global court to stop Germany from selling weapons to Israel.

Nicaragua has requested the ICJ to issue five provisional measures, including that Germany “immediately suspend its aid to Israel, in particular its military assistance, including military equipment”.

On the domestic front, a five-page statement signed by nearly 600 German civil servants and sent to Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior ministers demanded that the country “cease arm deliveries to the Israeli government with immediate effect”.

Public opinion in Germany is also shifting. In a recent survey, nearly 69 percent said they do not consider Israel's action in Gaza as “justified”.

"This level of pressure is unprecedented…the electorate, the civil servants’ letter and the ICJ case, but Germany is stuck within its own reason to exist,” says Dr. Amro Ali, professor of Sociology and an analyst specialising on the Middle East.

“Which means that they believe they are on the right course and that they are doing the right thing. Changing course now would mean a major foreign policy reassessment,” he tells TRT World.

‘Germany is complicit’

According to the leading conflict think tank SIPRI, German weapons accounted for 47 percent of all Israeli weapons imports, closely behind the US with 53 percent. Germany has been Israel's second-largest weapons supplier for the last 20 years.

The more recent imports include two Saar 6-class warships, as well as missiles and tank engines. Last year alone, the total value of arms exports rose sharply to $349M, nearly ten times higher than in 2022.

German Saar corvettes are being used in the naval blockade of Gaza, while German-made diesel engines are being used in Israeli Merkava-4 tanks, which are also being used in Gaza.

But this open-ended support has now come back to bite Germany’s ruling class, experts say.

Associate Professor at Kings College London and Director of MENA Analytica, Dr. Andres Krieg, says Germany is complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza.

"Germany has been complicit through its arms sales in this war in Gaza quite directly, and it bears a degree of responsibility for what Israel is doing in the enclave,” Krieg tells TRT World.

“Germany is so deeply involved, trapped in its own 'raison de'tat', blindly supporting Israel no matter what, no matter if Israel is committing war crimes or potential genocide, Germany will stand by its side. Germany's support for Israel following the Holocaust could go as far as Germany abandoning international law."

He is also of the view that despite growing pressure, Germany is unlikely to change course due to a lack of domestic pressure from the media and the political class. Any voice of dissent has been suppressed by the mainstream.

"There isn't any broad or critical discourse in Germany on the matter of Israel. Any critical discourse has been suppressed, there’s been a lot of coercion against academics, coercion against journalists who want to write a different story. So the German mainstream on this whole discourse is very one-sided, very pro-Israel. Therefore, it’s not surprising the German government doesn't feel that much pressure," he adds.

Smoke screen

However, when met with criticism of its policies of blindingly supporting Israel, Dr. Ali says, Germany engages in a bit of diplomacy on social media to off-set this notion.

"They'll condemn Israeli settlers, but the empirical reality is that a huge percentage of Israeli arms imports come from Germany. There is a high probability that a lot of the deaths and injuries in Gaza are caused by German arms."

He, however, adds that the weight and intensity of the pressure on the German government is dividing it internally.

"This letter (by civil servants) holds up a mirror to German officialdom. The German government's policy towards Israel is dividing institutions within it, German officials do not sound unified, there is a clear distinction between the foreign office and the bureaucracy in the foreign office."

Dr. Ali adds that Germany's insistence on continuing to sell weapons to Israel has also left it isolated among other EU countries.

"Many EU member countries don't see eye to eye with Germany on this issue, countries such as Ireland, Belgium and Spain have all voiced concerns about continued weapons sales to Israel."

While collectively, these tactics have applied unprecedented pressure on the German government, Dr. Ali also feels it’s difficult to say if Germany will change course.

"Especially now that (Israeli premier Benjamin) Netanyahu has been given a new lease of life after Iran's symbolic attack on Israel, the German government is busy trying to build a victim narrative around Israel, so it looks difficult that the German government will stop selling arms to Israel."