German foreign minister to make stop in Gaza

Germany’s foreign minister announced Sunday that he will visit the Gaza Strip — a rare trip to the Hamas-ruled territory by a Western leader.

In meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials earlier in the day, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was concerned about the situation in Gaza, which is struggling to recover from a devastating war with Israel last year.

He said that “concrete measures” were needed to reconstruct the coastal enclave in order to prevent a renewal of hostilities between Israel and Hamas.

Steinmeier told President Reuven Rivlin that Gaza’s rehabilitation would build confidence between both sides, and added that resumed peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians should focus on Gaza as well as on the West Bank.

“The troubled situation in Gaza demands of us to think about concrete steps to improve daily life there — without which, I am afraid, the situation is escalating,” he said.

Since the end of the 50-day war last summer, which saw extensive devastation in the Strip, only a handful of world leaders have visited the Gaza Strip.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini and a delegation of 22 German lawmakers have been among the few senior diplomats to make official visits to Gaza.

A high-profile visit to the Strip by former US president Jimmy Carter, scheduled for earlier this month, was called off at the last minute without an explanation.

During his meeting with Steinmeier Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was seeking to advance “confidence-building measures including the flow of up to 800 trucks a day of construction and humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and we are considering other things.”

President Rivlin told the German foreign minister that “the need to rebuild Gaza and the renewal of direct negotiations is very clear to us.”