The federal government is expanding its approvals for arms deliveries to Israel more than previously known. According to the Foreign Office, exports of arms worth 94.05 million euros have been permitted to the country, which is at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon, since August alone. That is more than twice as much as the 45.74 million euros that the Ministry of Economic Affairs reported to the Bundestag’s Economic Committee last week for the entire year up to October 13th. The new number comes from a response from the Foreign Office to a request from BSW MP Sevim Dagdelen, which was received by the German Press Agency. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned on Thursday against undifferentiated black-and-white thinking in the discussion about arms export permits for Israel. “This is not a contradiction, but rather two sides of the same coin: the right to self-defense in accordance with international humanitarian law,” said the Green politician on the sidelines of a support conference for Lebanon in Paris. When exporting to third countries such as Israel, every delivery is checked within the framework of humanitarian, European and international law. “We do that here too.” There has been a dispute over arms deliveries for months. The answer leaves open whether the approved exports include war weapons. In response to a reporter’s question about the numbers, Baerbock said that a distinction must be made between weapons of war and other armaments. The current question relates to other military equipment, the approval of which is also being examined. There is a wide range here, sometimes it involves spare parts or supplier parts. That’s why there are always different numbers, “because it depends on the different armaments at the location.” Baerbock did not provide any details about the figures for Israel reported by the German Foreign Ministry. There has been a dispute for months over arms deliveries to Israel. Last year, the traffic light government approved arms deliveries to Israel worth 326.5 million euros, including war weapons worth 20.1 million. The majority of the export permits went back to the period after the terrorist attack on Israel by the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas on October 7th. In the first few months of this year, however, export permits were drastically reduced. Merz accused Ampel of blocking – Scholz countered. By August 21, after an earlier answer to a parliamentary question, only deliveries worth 14.42 million euros had been approved. The export of military weapons was no longer permitted from the beginning of March until this date. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) then accused the federal government of blocking export applications from defense companies, including the delivery of ammunition and spare parts for tanks. The federal government, on the other hand, always emphasized that there was no ban on arms exports. “We have delivered weapons and we will deliver weapons,” Scholz promised in the Bundestag debate on the anniversary of the attack on October 7th. This is now also reflected in the statistics. More on the topic BSW politician Dagdelen called the exports “irresponsible”. “By providing arms aid to Israel, the traffic light government is aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon instead of taking into account the majority will of the population in Germany for an arms embargo,” she said.
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