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BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing open rebellion from members of his own party over his decision to suspend some arms shipments to Israel, underscoring the thorny challenge Israel policy poses in a country that has long defined itself by staunch support of the Jewish state.
Merz announced on Friday that his administration would no longer approve weapons exports to Israel "that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice."
The move came after the Israeli government approved a plan to seize control of Gaza City and amid reports of widespread famine in the Gaza Strip, as well as pressure from European allies to take a stronger stand against the ongoing war.
Backlash was swift.
"I condemn the administration's decision to stop weapons shipments to Israel in the strongest terms," Carsten MĂĽller, a member of parliament from Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wrote Friday evening on X, calling it a "significant misjudgment."
One CDU executive board member complained to the SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that Merz had not consulted party leaders and warned that if the chancellor continued on this course, "the administration will be finished by Christmas." (Merz became chancellor in May.)
Criticism has been even fiercer from the Christian Social Union, the CDU's sister party in the state of Bavaria. Horst Seehofer, the former CSU leader and interior minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel, summed up party sentiment: "This foreign policy mistake will have long-lasting repercussions."
One CSU official suggested the goal was to help Merz find a way to backtrack. "It's now about the exit strategy," the official told the Bild newspaper.
The controversy "shows the complexities of German policies toward Israel here," said Claudia Major, a senior vice president and international security expert at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "Nothing is easy."
Europe stood solidly behind Israel after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas. But as the war and suffering in Gaza have dragged on through a second year, European leaders have taken an increasingly critical stance toward Israel's actions. France and Britain each announced plans in recent weeks to recognize a Palestinian state.
Still, the European Union - Israel's largest trading partner - has struggled to approve even the one concrete proposal to pressure Israel, a partial freeze of Israeli access to an E.U. research fund, amid German and Italian resistance.
Germany has long been one of Israel's most steadfast allies, a legacy of the Holocaust and of Germany's decades-long effort to make amends for the murder of 6 million Jews.
In 2008, in the first address by a German chancellor to the Israeli parliament, Merkel announced that ensuring Israel's security was part of Germany's "Staatsräson," or "reason of state" - a position that has been reiterated by German leaders ever since.
Since the Oct. 7 attack and Israel's war in Gaza, German authorities have cracked down on some pro-Palestinian protests, and artists and writers critical of Israel have complained of censorship or loss of funding in Germany.
Last year, Germany amended its citizenship test to include questions about Judaism, antisemitism and Germany's support for Israel. The state of Saxony-Anhalt began requiring a written commitment to the "right of the State of Israel to exist" for naturalization.
And Merz, while campaigning for chancellor, criticized the incumbent government for being an insufficient ally to Israel, promising, "In the future, Israel will receive what it needs to exercise its right of self-defense. The term 'reason of state' will once again be measured by actions, not just words."
Still, as German officials continued to voice nearly unqualified support for Israel during the Gaza war, public opinion began to shift. A July poll found that three-quarters of Germans wanted the country's government to put more pressure on Israel regarding humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
A majority of Germans also say their country should recognize Palestinian statehood, by 54 percent to 31 percent, with even more support among young Germans, according to a poll at the end of July.
Amid pressure from both the German public and European allies, Merz began to voice some criticism of Israeli aggression in Gaza. In May, following a deadly Israeli strike on a Gaza school being used as a shelter, Merz said the war's civilian casualties could "no longer be justified by a fight against Hamas terrorism," and warned Israel against doing "anything that at some point its best friends are no longer willing to accept."
Now, Merz apparently decided, Israel crossed that line.
But he reportedly announced the partial arms suspension without consulting senior members of the CDU or CSU, leading to a rare outburst of public condemnation from within Merz's own ranks.
In an area as sensitive as Israel policy, it was striking to see Merz surprise his party, Major said.
Merz is "known for shooting from the hip sometimes," said Henning Schroeder, emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota and former director of the school's DAAD Center for German and European Studies. Still, if "your own leading party members are saying no, that's something that wasn't prepared the way it should have been by Merz," Schroeder said.
Schroeder grew up in West Germany in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when "there was no doubt that we are going to support Israel no matter what," he said. Now, that's begun to change, in part because some younger Germans no longer feel the same driving sense of guilt about the World War II or determination to protect the Jewish state.
"It's obvious that younger people have not grown up with all these narratives about World War II around them," Schroeder said. "It's much more remote for many people. I think therefore there might be the feeling Israel is a country like any other country."
For all the criticism from the CDU and CSU, Merz's announcement won praise from the junior partner in his governing coalition, the Social Democrats, as well as from other political parties across the spectrum - including the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
That leaves Merz in the awkward position of enjoying support from his electoral opponents on both the left and the right, but not from many within his own party.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the chorus of criticism Sunday, calling Merz a "friend of Israel" but charging that he "buckled under the pressure of false TV reports [and] internal pressure from various groups."
Merz countered in a TV interview that "public pressure doesn't influence me as much as my own perspective." His political allies, frustrated by his go-it-alone approach, might be inclined to agree.