Question:

Ms Baerbock, the Middle East is threatening to go up in flames. The traffic-light coalition in the Federal Government is about to finally fall apart. And your Green party is in turmoil. Which crisis hotspot is causing you the most concern at the moment?

Annalena Baerbock:

The international situation, of course. When you travel so much to regions in crisis, it allows you to see your own country more clearly. Despite all the challenges we have at home, it is such a blessing that we in Germany live in freedom. In a welfare state where it goes without saying that all children go to school and everyone has health insurance. In a country where we can go to bed at night without worrying that our house will be hit be a bomb.

Question:

It is now a year since the monstrous attack on Israel by Hamas. Can you remember the moment when you heard about it?

Annalena Baerbock:

I remember it exactly. That day showed me how closely personal happiness and the catastrophes of the world can be intertwined in my job as foreign minister. It was my daughter’s birthday. Suddenly, the first inconceivable reports arrived. Shortly after that, I was in intensive crisis talks at the Federal Foreign Office.

Question:

Was the scale of the attacks clear to you straight away?

Annalena Baerbock:

The full extent of the horror could only be properly understood as time went on. More than 1,100 people who, like us, had expected to have a perfectly normal day. More than 1,100 people simply slaughtered – in their homes, at the kitchen table, in children’s bedrooms, at a music festival. Over the course of the day, the dimensions of that inhuman attack became clear: Israel had been hit right in the heart. It was a rupture with which Hamas threatened to plunge a whole region into chaos.

Question:

It was the most horrific massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded with the attack on Gaza. There are still around 100 hostages in the hands of Hamas. At the moment, the conflict in the north with Lebanese Hezbollah is escalating. How powerless or how frustrated does one feel as foreign minister?

Annalena Baerbock:

On some days, very. But that’s exactly what terrorists want: for us to let them take the driving seat. For that reason, the most important thing is not to give up. And even though efforts for peace have been unsuccessful so far, I keep reminding myself that, when it comes to peace, every single step and every human life saved counts. It still gets under my skin to remember the moment when, not far from Gaza a few days after the Hamas attack, I met Yoni Ascher – a father, a family man, who was utterly distraught and said to me, “As a mother, promise me one thing: never be glad to have a weekend free of kids. That’s what I was thinking when my wife drove off to the grandparents’ with my two little daughters. I haven’t seen them since.” He showed me a video on his phone of his wife with the two girls, crammed onto a truck, in the hands of terrorists. I swore to myself that I would do everything in my power so that Yoni Ascher could hold his family in his arms once more – he and all the other family members of what were over 200 hostages.

Question:

What became of the family?

Annalena Baerbock:

It was November, and I was in the middle of our party conference. That’s when his message of relief came: in the humanitarian ceasefire, which we and others had put so much diplomatic work into, his wife and the two little girls had been among those released. For me, it was one of the best pieces of news I have ever had in my time as foreign minister.

Question:

You have taken eleven trips to the region since the terrorist attacks, nine of them to Israel. Were you really able to achieve anything? Or does one feel a bit like a messenger pigeon in that situation?

Annalena Baerbock:

Messenger pigeons should not be underestimated. Not just in the past, they have often played an important role during crises and wars. Aircraft fly these days – but a foreign minister’s job is just the same. Where political players have stopped talking to one another, mediation is essential. That is the heart of diplomacy. It was no coincidence that the first hostages to be freed included a large number of German Israelis – including that family.

Question:

In mid-September, pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to members of Hezbollah exploded. Now there are Israeli airborne attacks on Lebanon. These are reported by the Lebanese authorities to have killed more than a thousand people, including civilians. Is this still self-defence or has it become state terrorism?

Annalena Baerbock:

What it means to live on a daily basis with the threat of missile strikes is something we can hardly imagine. That was and remains part of day-to-day life in Israel. In Israel, the slides in play parks are built in such a way that children can shelter underneath them. Because of Hezbollah, 80,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel for a year. Israel, like every country in the world, has not only the right but the duty to defend itself, to protect its people from the Hezbollah terrorists. But I have always also made it clear that international humanitarian law applies; it obliges all parties to do no harm to civilians.

Question:

What’s your assessment of the targeted killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – a military success or a dangerous escalation?

Annalena Baerbock:

Both perspectives exist. By the logic of military thinking alone, Israel greatly weakened Hezbollah by taking out Nasrallah. Nasrallah was the head of a terrorist organisation and certainly no innocent. By the logic of long-term security for the people of the region, however, the question arises of what happens next. What will this lead to? Hezbollah, possibly with support from Iran, will be out for revenge and may be more unpredictable than ever. We were in the middle of diplomatic negotiations seeking de-escalation; now, a spiral of violence seems imminent. The situation is highly explosive. That’s why we, together with the Americans, the French and Arab partners, called for a 21-day ceasefire – to make room for diplomacy. The opposite has happened. Regrettably.

Question:

Is Israel bombing a solution away into the distance?

Annalena Baerbock:

It is not in Israel’s security interests for Lebanon to become the new Gaza. That’s why we are working with our partners on exactly that, to ensure that the situation doesn’t escalate into an all-out war. After all, it is clear that Israel can only live in security in the long term if the Palestinians and the countries bordering on Israel can live in security. And vice versa.

Question:

Is liberating the hostages really still the Israeli Government’s objective?

Annalena Baerbock:

It is evidently not the very top priority for all members of the government. The hostages’ families always say to me that the most important thing is a ceasefire if it is even to be possible to rescue the hostages alive.

Question:

One of the founders of Human Rights Watch has called what is happening in Gaza genocide. According to the UN Convention, that means the attempt “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Doesn’t that apply here?

Annalena Baerbock:

The situation in Gaza is appalling. No question. That’s why I’m advocating on a daily basis for international law to be respected, for a ceasefire and for the alleviation of human suffering. At the same time, making that assessment under international law is more complex than just applying the harshest condemnation that we have for human atrocity – for example, when hospitals and schools in Gaza are misused as terrorist infrastructure.

Question:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied that people are starving in Gaza. When you contradicted him, he is reported to have yelled at you.

Annalena Baerbock:

Diplomacy can mean not beating about the bush. And, for me, part of what the special friendship between Germany and Israel means is doing everything to protect Israel from losing itself. Sometimes, that means being yelled at when you speak uncomfortable truths. The fact remains that the Israeli Government must more than urgently ensure that humanitarian supplies are reaching the people in Gaza – not least to puncture the claims that it is obstructing those supplies.

Question:

Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’être. Should Germany be involved in a Gaza protection force within the framework of a peace agreement?

Annalena Baerbock:

We should keep reminding ourselves what other countries did for us after the Second World War. The Allies not only helped us a great deal in rebuilding our country; by their presence, they also gave our neighbours a security guarantee that war would never again emanate from German soil. Because they laid that cornerstone, we have today been living in peace with our neighbours for decades. That was the greatest good fortune for our country. If Germany at some point has the chance to play its part in generating the same good fortune for the Middle East, we should do it.

Question:

Does that mean, in concrete terms, that it is conceivable for German troops to be deployed for peacekeeping in the Middle East?

Annalena Baerbock:

Peace will require international security guarantees that terrorism against Israel will never again emanate from Gaza, and that the Palestinians can live in security in a state of their own. That’s why I made it clear at a security conference in Israel back in early summer that Germany should play its part in such an international security guarantee – as one of the closest friends that Israel can trust absolutely, like the Americans and the British. Alongside that, we have learned lessons from Afghanistan.

Question:

What lessons exactly?

Annalena Baerbock:

That peace missions always need strong regional partners too. Israel’s major Arab neighbours would have to assume part of the responsibility. We have been working on that for months. That’s why I have taken a first step forwards in that direction. To my great pleasure, Jordan declared after a joint meeting here in New York that Arab countries were prepared to take on security guarantees for Israel – in the context of recognition for the Palestinian state. We need to build on that.

Question:

In Germany though, not only is support for Israel dwindling, but help for Ukraine is also drawing some severe criticism. In the parliamentary elections of three Länder, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance gained a lot of votes with populist peace slogans. How much does that worry you?

Annalena Baerbock:

A lot. It shows how effective Russian propaganda is. If parties gain by it that are more closely aligned with autocratic ideas than with our German Basic Law, that is a risk to our country’s security. The simplistic assertion that stopping military aid to Ukraine would put an end to the war is as naive as it is wrong. If Ukraine stops defending itself, Ukraine will be finished and Putin’s troops will be on the Polish border. If Putin stops attacking, that will put an end to the war.

Question:

Should Russia take part in the next peace conference, as Olaf Scholz recently and surprisingly proposed?

Annalena Baerbock:

The Federal Chancellor was picking up on a proposal that Ukraine’s President Zelensky made during the summer. Regrettably, Putin responded to the invitation by attacking a children’s hospital. I can therefore only repeat: it is not down to us, let alone to Ukraine, that no peace talks are taking place. The whole world would breathe a sigh of relief if Putin would finally stop bombing and be prepared to take a seat at the negotiating table. The invitation stands.

[…]

Question:

According to a recent survey by the Allensbach Institute, one in three Germans feels that the Greens should under no circumstances form part of the next Federal Government. Only the AfD is less popular. What’s going wrong?

Annalena Baerbock:

In these times of crisis, social and economic change is more likely to be perceived as insecurity rather than progress. In connection with 100-year floods, everyone understands that climate action contributes to everyone’s security. But we have evidently not got the message across that the Greens are pro-security in other fields too: social security and also internal security. When we get that right, the polling will improve again.

Question:

What do you intend to do differently? The Greens are still in favour of change.

Annalena Baerbock:

Yes, because without change there can be no progress. In the traffic-light coalition, we have initiated several developments, overcome the reform stagnation that beset the grand coalition and moved the country forwards in various fields, from the expansion of renewables to skilled immigration. The heated public debates not only among the traffic-light coalition parties but also within our own party – not least on migration policy – have unfortunately overshadowed that. That has to change.

Question:

How?

Annalena Baerbock:

We need to reconcile apparent contradictions. We demonstrated that with pragmatic policy on climate action: the coal phase-out will not lead to huge job losses; instead, together, we can modernise the country in a climate-friendly and socially responsible way. On the heating sector transition, as we all know, we did not really get that message across to begin with. Displacement and migration is a topic that we have not addressed openly enough in recent election campaigns, although the same applies here: internal security and being a modern country of immigration are not opposites but two sides of the same coin. To be humane, we need to have order. It is to protect the right to asylum that a strong European asylum system is so crucial. People who have no claim to protection need to be swiftly sent back, preferably at the EU’s external borders. Simultaneously, those who need protection or who come here as skilled workers need to be integrated much more quickly.

[…]

Interview: Miriam Hollstein and Jan Rosenkranz

www.stern.de