A German official said Germany will continue to support Israel despite claims of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pictured, being increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – A German government official is denying a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel claiming that the German government might stop supporting Israel unconditionally due to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s unhappiness with the Israeli government policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Friday Der Spiegel reported that senior politicians in the German government’s current ruling parties, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the joint Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union, said Germany is worried that Netanyahu us “instrumentalizing” Germany’s friendship.

“Israel’s current policies are not contributing to the country remaining Jewish and democratic,” said Norbert Röttgen, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German Parliament. “We must express this concern more clearly to Israel,”  Röttgen added.

Among several examples of allegedly cooler relations between Germany and Israel, Merkel is quoted in the magazine article as having said during a recent visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Berlin that she understands why “Abbas continually seeks out the (U.N.) Security Council.”

A senior official in Jerusalem had already denied that such cooling is taking place, saying that the “comments in the Der Spiegel story are an attempt inside Germany to slam Merkel for her close ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,”Yedioth Achronoth reported.

A German government official also told Reuters on Sunday that “the guidelines of German Middle East policy have not changed.”