Friedrich Merz may have restored Germany’s diplomatic credibility internationally, but his latest foray into Middle Eastern statecraft shows the Chancellor has fundamentally misunderstood both the nature of the Palestinian project and Germany’s own moral obligations. Like Keir Starmer, by threatening to recognise Palestinian statehood if Israel fails to meet certain conditions, Merz has managed the remarkable feat of getting the entire equation backwards – demanding concessions from a democracy under siege while offering rewards to the very terrorists holding German citizens hostage.
Unlike other national movements that have eventually embraced pragmatic statehood, Palestinian political culture has consistently defined itself through resistance rather than construction
The moral inversion is breathtaking. At this moment, Hamas continues to hold German hostages, yet Merz’s diplomatic energy is focused on extracting promises from Jerusalem. This represents either profound strategic confusion or calculated domestic pandering. Neither is particularly flattering to a leader who prides himself on clear-eyed realism.
The fundamental flaw in Merz’s approach stems from a misreading of Palestinian nationalism itself. Unlike other national movements that have eventually embraced pragmatic statehood, Palestinian political culture has consistently defined itself through resistance rather than construction. When offered statehood in 1947, 2000, and 2008, Palestinian leadership rejected each opportunity, preferring the romantic purity of perpetual struggle to the mundane compromises of governance.
This isn’t accidental, it’s structural. Palestinian political identity has been forged in the crucible of rejection. The movement’s most celebrated figures are those who said ‘no’ most dramatically, not those who attempted to build functioning institutions. Recognising this ‘state’ before its leadership demonstrates any capacity for actual statecraft is rewarding dysfunction.
Germany’s own historical responsibilities should make this equation obvious. Having once perpetrated history’s most systematic attempt at Jewish extermination, Germany now possesses perhaps the world’s clearest moral obligation to ensure Israel’s survival. That this needs stating in 2025 suggests how thoroughly contemporary German politics has been captured by fashionable sentiment over historical responsibility.
The timing of Merz’s gambit is particularly unfortunate, coming as it does when 28 western nations have just issued a statement criticising Israeli conduct while offering Hamas barely a paragraph’s worth of mild rebuke. This represents a fundamental misallocation of outrage. Western fury should be directed at the terrorists who initiated this conflict, not the democracy attempting to end it.
That Germany has so far refused to join this misguided chorus is one bright spot. The Christian Democrats have reportedly resisted pressure to sign the international statement, recognising that moral clarity sometimes requires swimming against the tide of international opinion. Merz would do well to extend this principled stance to his Palestinian recognition threats.
The domestic political calculations behind Merz’s position are transparent but troubling. Germany’s streets have witnessed months of demonstrations demanding Palestinian recognition, often featuring the curious spectacle of progressive activists marching alongside supporters of one of the world’s most reactionary movements. The ideological contradictions are stark – advocates for LGBTQ rights and gender equality rallying for a cause whose leaders execute homosexuals and subjugate women as state policy.
Yet rather than exposing these contradictions, Merz appears to be accommodating them, following the same pattern exhibited by other western leaders facing similar domestic pressures. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s trajectory offers a cautionary example: despite his initial attempts to make Labour more Israel-friendly after Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, Starmer has increasingly bent to activist pressure. With his approval ratings plummeting, domestic considerations clearly influenced Britain’s decision to join the 28-nation statement criticising Israel while barely acknowledging Hamas’s role as the conflict’s instigator.
In Berlin, Friedrich Merz now continues to represent an astonishing continuation of Angela Merkel’s fatal tendency to mistake the preferences of vocal activist minorities for democratic mandates. The result is policy shaped by those who shout loudest rather than those who vote most thoughtfully.
The strategic implications extend far beyond Palestine. By signalling that German policy can be influenced by street pressure, Merz invites every future international controversy to be fought out on German streets rather than in German institutions. This is precisely the kind of imported conflict that responsible statesmen should be preventing, not encouraging.
More fundamentally, Merz’s approach reveals a continued misunderstanding of Germany’s role in the world. Having spent decades as Europe’s economic powerhouse while remaining diplomatically cautious, Germany now possesses the influence to shape international outcomes – but only if it exercises that influence responsibly. Threatening premature recognition of a Palestinian state whose leadership remains committed to Israel’s destruction squanders that influence for no strategic gain.
The Chancellor’s calculation appears to be that conditioning recognition on Israeli behaviour provides him with maximum flexibility. He can appear tough on Israel to satisfy domestic critics while avoiding immediate consequences by setting conditions unlikely to be met. This kind of diplomatic triangulation might work in normal circumstances, but the Middle East has a way of exposing such clever-by-half positioning. If Merz genuinely wishes to contribute to Middle Eastern peace, the formula should be obvious: demand that Hamas release all hostages immediately and unconditionally, renounce violence permanently, and demonstrate genuine commitment to peaceful coexistence. Only then should questions of recognition arise. Anything else represents rewarding terrorism while punishing its victims.
The uncomfortable truth that Merz seems reluctant to acknowledge is that any viable Palestinian state must be built without Hamas in power – not alongside it, not in partnership with it, but in explicit opposition to it. Hamas’s foundational charter doesn’t merely call for Israeli withdrawal from disputed territories; it demands the complete extinction of the Jewish state and, by extension, the elimination of Jews and Christians from the Middle East entirely. This isn’t tactical positioning that might evolve through negotiation – it’s theological imperative that defines the organisation’s very existence. For a leader of the Christian Democratic Union to contemplate legitimising a political entity dominated by forces explicitly committed to Christian as well as Jewish extermination represents not just strategic blindness but a betrayal of the very values his party claims to represent.
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