German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has warned of unforeseeable consequences for the broader Middle East region as tensions and clashes increase between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Israeli forces have been waging an intense military offensive in the Gaza Strip for seven months, with leaders vowing to destroy the Palestinian Hamas militant group in response to the bloody October 7 terror attacks on Israel.
"Another war would mean a regional escalation on a scale that we can hardly imagine," Baerbock told Germany's Deutschlandfunk public radio on Wednesday, a day after meeting with Lebanese and Israeli leaders in Beirut and Jerusalem.
However, Israel and Lebanon were in danger of slipping into such a war, she said.
"And that is exactly what we need to prevent, that through the daily escalation, where more rockets are flying, large parts on both sides do not want this war, but we are slipping into it."
Baerbock said Lebanese leaders in Beirut appeared to view it the same way, but unfortunately the government has "no effective access on the ground, not even to Hezbollah," Baerbock said, making efforts by mediators like the US and France all the more important.
What happens next in the Gaza Strip will also be crucial for further developments on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, according to Baerbock.
"If this urgently needed ceasefire is finally achieved in Gaza, then that will also calm the northern front," she said, while an escalation that sees Israel fighting wars on two fronts would be fatal to the process.
A plan presented last month by US President Joe Biden for a ceasefire in the Gaza war is supported by the Israeli government, said Baerbock, who again demanded that Hamas accept the plan.
