Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, continued her diplomatic tour of the Middle East on Tuesday with a visit to the Israel-Gaza border crossing point Kerem Shalom.
Describing the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as "hell," she demanded that international aid organizations be able to bring aid to Palestinians "unhindered" and announced that Germany had increased its funding to the World Food Programme by an additional €10 million ($10.8 million).
"Given the suffering in Gaza, we can no longer afford this discussion about where exactly the bottleneck is," she said, demanding that the process of "unloading, inspecting and reloading trucks up to three times," as described to her by Egyptian and Israeli border personnel, be speeded up.
"We need a way to change this," she said, adding that Germany would "pull out all the stops" to support a Jordanian concept which would see a smaller number of trucks enter Gaza directly without having to undergo the lengthy inspection process.
Baerbock, of Germany's Green Party which is part the current coalition government, became the first foreign minister permitted to visit the Kerem Shalom crossing by Israeli authorities, and was shown how around 120 trucks are prepared and loaded with aid each day.
Prior to the October 7 attack on Israel by militant-Islamist Hamas, during which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, around 500 aid trucks would enter Gaza daily, and around 300 via Kerem Shalom.
According to Israeli border personnel, 12 trucks an hour can be checked for weapons, ammunition and other non-permitted items by two scanners ― which Baerbock wasn't shown.
She was told by Israeli personnel that more trucks could be processed but that there were too few Palestinian drivers, according to the German dpa news agency.
Following her visit to Kerem Shalom, Baerbock held talks with her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz in Jerusalem.
The discussions, which German news agency dpa described as "professional" but "cool" and in which neither sought much eye contact, revolved around Monday's UN call for a cease-fire and the release of hostages as well as Baerbock's repeated calls for a two-state solution.
