The president of the Bundestag, Julia Klöckner, visited Israel and the Gaza Strip on Thursday for the first time in her capacity as the head of the German parliament.
Klöckner entered an area of Gaza that is under Israeli military control, the dpa news agency reported, but the journalists accompanying her were not allowed to enter the Strip.
The visit, in which Israeli troops escorted the politician to the edge of the Israeli-held zone, was the first visit to the Gaza Strip by a top German official since 2010, and the first by a top E.U. official since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel, which triggered an Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
At a press conference in Jerusalem, Klöckner criticized a Knesset bill that would allow Israeli civilian courts to sentence to death convicted terrorists, in addition to Nazi war criminals and traitors.
“The achievement of abolishing state executions should not be jeopardized,” Klöckner told reporters at a press conference in Jerusalem, according to the Handelsblatt newspaper. “The death penalty is incompatible with the protection of human dignity. A state must not seek revenge,” she said.
On Nov. 10, the bill passed a first reading in the Israeli parliament; it needs to pass two additional ones to become law.
Reaffirming her support for a two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Klöckner told reporters: “I believe we must also adhere to the goal of living in peaceful coexistence.”
She also advocated lifting restrictions on the introduction of supplies to Gaza. “Humanitarian aid is not a political concession, but a moral obligation,” Klöckner said.
In an interview with dpa ahead of her visit, Klöckner said: “Israel has a right to exist, a right to defend itself,” adding the Jewish state was a “very important anchor point for Germany in the Middle East as a state governed by the rule of law, as a democracy.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar hosted Klöckner, who was elected in March to serve in the German constitution’s second-highest office, in his office and called her a “true friend” of Israel.
Sa’ar thanked Klöckner, who represents the center-right CDU party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for her “support for Israel and her deep commitment to Holocaust remembrance,” Sa’ar wrote on X. “During the meeting, we also discussed the situation in Judea and Samaria. I made it clear that the one violating the agreements—ranging from the fight against terror and incitement, and to harming the environment and archaeological sites—is the Palestinian Authority.”
The friendship between Israel and Germany, Sa’ar wrote, “is important and strategic.”
Klöckner, who is in Israel as a guest of her counterpart, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, addressed the Holocaust after visiting the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. “There is nothing comparable to the country that extended a hand to us after the Holocaust,” she said of Israel. “The fact that trust has grown out of this profound guilt [of Nazi Germany] is a gift,” Handelsblatt quoted her as saying.
Germany is considered one of Israel’s closest allies in the European Union, where other member states, including Spain, Belgium and Ireland, have accused Israel of genocide and imposed sanctions on it.
