A key ally of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pushed back against a European Union proposal to suspend Israel’s preferential trade benefits in response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“Sanctions against Israel are fundamentally wrong,” Markus Soeder, head of the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union party that’s affiliated with Merz’s governing Christian Democrats, told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “We as the CSU will not accept this in Germany.”