Germany‘s foreign minister threatened unspecified measures against Israel on Tuesday and said Berlin would not export weapons used to break humanitarian law, as he and Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered their most severe rebuke yet over Gaza.

Germany, along with the United States, had long remained in support of Israel‘s conduct since the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. Its about-turn comes as the European Union is reviewing its Israel policy and Britain, France, and Canada also threatened “concrete actions” over Gaza.

Speaking to broadcaster WDR, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul warned Germany‘s historic support for Israel must not be instrumentalized, as continued air strikes and shortages of food and medicines had made the situation in Gaza “unbearable.”

Earlier, Merz criticized air strikes on Gaza as no longer justified by the need to fight Hamas and “no longer comprehensible,” in comments at a press conference in Finland.

While not a complete rupture, the shift in tone is significant in a country whose leadership follows a policy of special responsibility for Israel, known as the Staatsraeson, due to the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust.

It also reflects a broader shift in German public opinion.

“Our committed fight against antisemitism and our full support for the right to exist and the security of the state of Israel must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip,” Wadephul said.

“We are now at a point where we have to think very carefully about what further steps to take,” he said, without giving further details.

“Where we see dangers of harm, we will of course intervene and certainly not supply weapons so that there will be further harm,” he said, adding that no new weapons orders were currently under consideration.

The shift in government stance comes after calls among the junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, to halt arms exports to Israel or else risk what the move’s backers say would be German complicity in war crimes.

Efforts to revive a short-lived ceasefire in Gaza that broke down in March have made little visible progress, although one regional diplomat said talks were still going on in Doha and there remained a chance for a deal.

The German comments are particularly striking given that Merz won elections in February promising to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on German soil in defiance of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The massive military strikes by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip no longer reveal any logic to me – how they serve the goal of confronting terror,” Merz said in Turku, Finland.

He did not reply to a question about German weapons exports to Israel. Wadephul said arms deliveries were a matter for a security council presided over by Merz, whose meetings are confidential.

The foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a further request for comment on whether Germany‘s next step could include halting weapons shipments.

The chancellor is due to speak to Netanyahu this week.

In his office, Merz has a picture of Zikim beach, where Hamas fighters arrived on boats during their rampage in 2023 that killed around 1,200 people – a picture he had hanging for years previously in his parliamentary office.

Israel‘s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, acknowledged German concerns on Tuesday but made no commitments.

“When Friedrich Merz raises this criticism of Israel, we listen very carefully because he is a friend,” Prosor told the ZDF broadcaster.

Merz’s comments come on top of a groundswell of opposition to Israel‘s actions. A survey by Civey, published in the Tagesspiegel newspaper this week, showed 51 percemt of Germans opposed weapons exports to Israel.

More broadly, only 36 percent of people in Germany view Israel positively, a survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation found in May, down from 46 percent in the last survey in 2021.

Only a quarter of Germans recognize a special responsibility towards the state of Israel, while 64 percent of Israelis believe Germany has a special obligation, the survey found.

The post Germany Threatens Steps Against Israel as Tone Shifts Over Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Spanish hatmaker warned that a 40-year tradition of supplying felt hats to Orthodox Jews in the US risked becoming a casualty in President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The community, which is mainly based in New York and New Jersey, buys around 30,000 hats annually from the 140-year-old Fernandez y Roche Industrias Sombreras Españolas factory in Seville in southern Spain, and in May began paying a 10 percent tariff on imports for the first time, the factory’s Managing Director Abraham Mazuecos told Reuters.

Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the EU for what he says are unfair trade imbalances with the US, has also recommended a further 50 percent tariff for EU goods, but on Sunday agreed to extend the deadline for talks between Washington and the 27-nation bloc for a deal until July 9.

Higher tariffs would be “dramatic” for the hand-made hat factory, since it can’t afford to reduce prices for its long-term clients in the U.S. to offset the new fee, Mazuecos said.

“Our margins are tight, so we expect a decline in demand,” Mazuecos told Reuters.

The factory supplies 60 percent of the 100,000 hats bought each year by Orthodox Jews, with half going to the US and the other half to Israel.

Spanish hats account for a fifth of all black felt hats purchased by the Orthodox Jewish community in the US, which also imports from Italy and China, Mazuecos said.

The black felt hat, worn daily by Orthodox Jewish men from the age of 13, is typically replaced every three years at a cost of between $120 and $380, he added.

Mazuecos said that US customers could gradually buy fewer hats from abroad and seek US manufacturers that can produce them at lower prices.

“There are hat factories in the United States, but they are highly specialized in cowboy hats,” he said.

The post Trump’s Trade War Imperils Spanish Hatmaker’s Business With US Orthodox Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israel and Syria are in direct contact and have in recent weeks held face-to-face meetings aimed at calming tensions and preventing conflict in the border region between the two longtime foes, five people familiar with the matter said.

The contacts mark a significant development in ties between states that have been on opposite sides of conflict in the Middle East for decades, as the US encourages the new Islamist rulers in Damascus to establish relations with Israel and Israel eases its bombardment of Syria.

They also build on back-channel talks via intermediaries since Islamist rebels Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad in December, said two Syrian and two Western sources, as well as a regional intelligence source familiar with the matter.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject for two nations with no official ties and a history of enmity. The direct talks and their scope have not been previously reported.

On the Syrian side, the sources said contacts have been led by senior security official Ahmad al-Dalati, who was appointed governor of the province of Quneitra, which borders the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, after the fall of Assad. Earlier this week, Dalati was also put in charge of security in the southern province of Sweida, home to Syria‘s Druze minority.

Reuters could not determine who participated on Israel‘s side, though two of the sources said they were security officials.

Three of the sources said there had been several rounds of in-person meetings in the border region, including in territory controlled by Israel.

Israel‘s foreign ministry and Syrian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this month, Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa confirmed indirect talks with Israel that he said were aimed at calming tensions, a striking admission that followed a Reuters report that the UAE was mediating such talks.

Israel has controlled the Golan Heights since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and took more territory in the aftermath of Assad’s ouster in December, citing lingering concerns over the extremist past of the country’s new rulers.

It has also waged a campaign of aerial bombardment that destroyed much of the country’s military infrastructure, while at the same time lobbying Washington to keep the country weak and decentralized.

But the bombing and the criticism have subsided in recent weeks.

On May 14, a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Sharaa in Riyadh upended decades of US Syria policy and signaled to Israel‘s government that it should work to reach understandings with Sharaa.

The regional intelligence source described Trump’s engagement with Sharaa as a pivotal part of a realignment in US policy that upset Israel‘s post-Assad strategy of exploiting Syria‘s fragmentation.

BROADER UNDERSTANDINGS?

The relative calm in May has also seen a reduction in tensions around Sweida, which saw days of bloody clashes between Druze armed factions, some of which enjoy Israeli backing, and Sunni Muslim fighters last month.

Amid the violence, Israel had launched a series of airstrikes, including one just outside the presidential palace overlooking Damascus, which it framed as a warning over threats against the Druze, an offshoot of Islam with adherents in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

While the direct talks are currently focused on joint security, such as preventing conflict and reducing Israeli incursions into Syrian border villages, two of the sources said they may help pave the way for broader political understandings.

“For now, they are about peace, as in the absence of war, rather than normalization,” said the person familiar with backchannel talks.

Trump indicated after meeting Sharaa that the Syrian leader was willing to eventually normalize ties with Israel, while adding that it would take some time.

Sharaa has not commented on the statement, saying instead that he supported a return to the terms of a 1974 ceasefire agreement that created a UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights.

Syria‘s new rulers have made repeated efforts to show they pose no threat to Israel, meeting representatives of the Jewish community in Damascus and abroad and detaining two senior members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

A letter sent by Syria‘s foreign ministry to the US State Department last month, seen by Reuters, said “we will not allow Syria to become a source of threat to any party, including Israel.”

More recently, Syria‘s leadership has shown goodwill by approving the handover of a trove of long-dead Israeli master spy Eli Cohen’s belongings.

The post Syria, Israel in Direct Talks Focused on Security, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.