Israel’s Prime Minister Scraps Meeting With Germany’s Top Diplomat Cancellation was response to foreign minister’s decision to meet a group critical of Israel’s armed forces, Netanyahu’s spokesman says By Andrea Thomas in Berlin and Rory Jones in Tel Aviv

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-prime-minister-scraps-meeting-with-germanys-top-diplomat-1493142352

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel scrapped a meeting with Germany’s top diplomat hours before they were to meet on Tuesday, the latest sign of tension between Israel and one of its oldest Western allies.

A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu said the decision came in response to the plan by German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to meet representatives of Breaking the Silence, a nongovernmental organization critical of the conduct of Israeli armed forces in the Palestinian territories.

“Imagine if foreign diplomats visiting the United States or Britain met with NGOs that call American or British soldiers war criminals,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement. “Leaders of those countries would surely not accept this.”

Mr. Gabriel, who is vice chancellor in Germany’s government and was on his first official trip to Israel since his appointment as foreign minister this year, said the snub would have no lasting impact on bilateral relations but expressed surprise at the Israeli premier’s decision.

“Imagine we were to invite Mr. Netanyahu to Germany and he wanted to meet with NGOs that also exist here and we were to say, ‘If you do that we will abort the visit.’ People would call us crazy.”

Later in the day, Mr. Gabriel declined to take a telephone call from Mr. Netanyahu, an Israeli official said. In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry said it couldn’t confirm that account.

Mr. Gabriel was expected to meet later Tuesday with representatives of Breaking the Silence, which collects testimony, often anonymously, from members of the Israeli military on its operations in the territories.

A spokesman for the organization couldn’t be reached for comment.

Postwar Germany has been among Israel’s most steadfast allies for decades. Chancellor Angela Merkel once described protecting the security of Israel as part of Germany’s “raison d’être.”

But the relationship has been put under strain recently, with Berlin becoming more critical of the lack of progress in efforts to reach a negotiated settlement in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Germany sharply criticized Israel’s retroactive legalization of thousands of settler dwellings in the West Bank in February. The Palestinians said all Israeli communities in the territory are illegal under international law.

That same month, Berlin postponed for a year a joint German-Israeli cabinet meeting planned for May in Jerusalem because of what it called “scheduling difficulties” caused by Germany’s presidency of the Group of 20 largest economies. CONTINUE AT SITE

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