The title of this post may, at first sight, seem a little baffling. After all, what does the smallish Central American state of Nicaragua have to do with Europe’s largest economy, Germany, especially with regard to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.
Nicaragua was the first country to join the case South Africa v. Israel, in January 2024. Three months later, its government, which has long supported the Palestinian cause, filed a suit at the International Court of Justice accusing Germany, Israel’s second largest arms supplier, of complicity in genocide. The Daniel Ortega government argued that by providing military and financial aid to Israel, Germany is facilitating genocide in Gaza and violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
At the same time as Nicaragua took Germany to court for complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza, it also filed an emergency application demanding that Germany stop supplying weapons to Israel forthwith. Managua argued that Germany had approved arms deliveries worth €326.5 million to Israel in 2023, ten times more than the previous year. Those deliveries, it said, could help facilitate Israel’s genocidal operations in the Gaza Strip.
In May, the ICJ rejected Nicaragua’s emergency request though it denied Germany’s request to dismiss Nicaragua’s lawsuit entirely. The process, it said, could drag on for years. Which brings us to the present.
On Friday (Oct 11), the Ortega government announced that it will break diplomatic relations with Israel, becoming only the fourth country to do since the Gaza offensive began just over a year ago. On the same day, roughly 9,000 kilometres away, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz launched a charm offensive in Israel’s direction, insisting that Germany would soon be supplying it with more weapons, after a sharp fall in deliveries this year prompted accusations that Berlin had deliberately delayed the exports.
“We have supplied weapons and … we have made decisions within the government that will ensure further deliveries in the near future,” Scholz said.
Germany’s “Genocide Clause”
An unnamed senior German government told Politico Europe that there was no formal arms embargo in place, blaming the delays instead on “bottlenecks caused by the retooling of the Bundeswehr and the fact that Germany is sending weapons to Ukraine.” This would certainly chime with our reports that Europe is suffering from acute weapons shortages due to the constant drain of resources for project Ukraine and its general lack of operational capability. As one Belgian general put it in February, Europe’s arms production is in “deep shit.”
But according to some observers, cited by DW, the German government have also been “spooked” by the looming threat of legal action — including Nicaragua’s ICJ accusations of complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
So how did Germany’s coalition government get round this problem? How can it keep furnishing Israel with deadly weapons for its near-constant attacks on civilian targets while putting its mind at ease that it won’t be found guilty of complicity in Israel’s war crimes. According to Germany’s biggest tabloid Bild, the solution, allegedly the brainchild of Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, was simple: tell Israel’s government that it would not receive any further weapons unless it provided written guarantees that said weapons would “not be used in acts of genocide.”
And that, apparently, is all that is needed to absolve Germany and its governing class from all responsibility under international law — the assurance of a government that is already guilty of just about every war crime in the book. Lest we forget, Germany has steadfastly denied that Israel has committed any acts of genocide in Gaza. But there appears to be a world of difference between what it says publicly, and what it thinks, or fears, privately.
Israel’s written assurances that it would not use Germany weaponry to commit acts of genocide — which some commentators are now calling Germany’s “genocide clause” — arrived last Thursday, a day before Scholz announced to parliament the re-supplying of arms to Israel.
https://x.com/clashreport/status/1845790121745916124
Unlike Germany, some governments in Europe are scrambling to put as much distance between themselves and Netanyahu’s far-right government as they can. In late May, three Western European countries, Spain, Ireland and Norway, recognised Palestine as a State. Yesterday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for an international arms embargo against Israel, accusing Netanyahu of aiming to impose “a new regional order by force.” He also urged the EU to suspend its association agreement with Israel.
By contrast, Germany continues to stand by Israel as “its reason of state” (in Scholz’s own words). Even after Israel’s recent pager bombings in Lebanon — as clear-cut an example of State terror as you’re likely to ever see — and its attacks these past few days against United Nations Interim Forces stationed in northern Lebanon, which even the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has described as “a serious violation of international law and completely unacceptable,” Berlin stands firmly behind Tel Aviv…
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Nick Corbishley 