2023-12-19 08:17:36
The crisis reaction center is located in the basement of the Foreign Office, and the federal government’s crisis team meets behind heavy vault doors. Since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th, he has been doing this regularly with a view to the situation in and around Israel. This was also the case last Thursday, when the Foreign Office crisis officer chaired a meeting attended by, among others, representatives from the Ministry of Defense, the Chancellery and the BND.
It should be about a departmental coordination on crisis preparedness in Lebanon and the question of how great the risk of escalation is – and how to prepare to quickly get German citizens out of Lebanon in the event of an expansion of the war. As the minutes with the note “VS – For official use only” show, the assessments between the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Defense differ significantly, especially when it comes to the last question.
Since the outbreak of war, there has been concern about wildfires not only in the region. The focus was always on the north of Israel, the border region with Lebanon, where Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been fighting for weeks. For Berlin, this concern also raised the question of how to get German citizens out of Lebanon as quickly as possible if the situation escalated. The country would then be difficult to reach and the airport in Beirut would probably not be usable. Israeli troops are stationed in the south of the country, the rest of the country borders either the sea or Syria.
On Friday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock received Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib in Berlin. According to the minutes from the previous day, she also wanted to discuss the plans for a possible evacuation. After the conversation, Baerbock spoke to the press about a “flammable powder keg” at the border.
Like an exchange of blows
The minutes from the crisis cellar show that the representatives of the Foreign Office not only assess the risk of a military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah as very high – but also obviously expect more from the Federal Ministry of Defense with a view to a possible evacuation operation. A very high three-digit number of people with a German passport in Lebanon have registered on the Federal Foreign Office’s crisis preparedness list. At the end of October, the Foreign Office had already asked German citizens to leave the country.
Image: FAZ map sjs.
Also at the end of October, the Bundeswehr made extensive preparations for a major evacuation operation in Cyprus. For this purpose, war and supply ships were concentrated on the island, including a 125-class frigate for the first time, as well as transport aircraft. Around 900 soldiers with material and vehicles were brought to Cyprus from the operationally tested airborne brigade and other units. After around four weeks without any specific deployment, the majority of the staff was flown back to Germany.
According to the Defense Ministry, the Bundeswehr “basically keeps its resources available for evacuation operations so that it can react flexibly to crisis situations worldwide.” The “long-term commitment of evacuation forces in a region reduces the federal government’s fundamental ability to respond to other scenarios,” it was said at the end of November, after the Foreign Office had apparently already objected to the reduction.
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