BERLIN/Germany: The German government is continuing to make the case for de-escalation in the Middle east conflict, as the number of German citizens registered on its crisis preparedness list in Lebanon is growing.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin said on Monday that 2,100 people had now registered on the list, 800 more than there had been last week.
However, it is not known how many of the people on the list have now travelled out of the Arab country as a result of the urgent warning issued by Germany.
The spokesman said that the question is now “whether we can find a way out of the escalation spiral.”
That spiral was triggered by the deadly Israeli attack on two high-ranking members of Hamas and Hezbollah.
On Wednesday night, an explosion in the room of an Iranian government guest house in Tehran killed the foreign head of the Islamist Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh. A few hours earlier, an airstrike had killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
Israel has said that it carried out the attack on Shukr, but there have been no official statements on Haniyeh’s killing. Iran and Hamas hold the Jewish state responsible in both cases.
The leadership in Tehran and Hezbollah, which it supports, threatened Israel with massive retaliation for the attacks. The Israeli government warned of serious consequences if that were to happen.
The spokesperson emphasized that the German government considers the killing of Haniyeh to be “unhelpful” in view of the talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of hostages for prisoners.
