Munich Dispatch: Gaza issue banished to the sidelines this year

MUNICH, GERMANY — Last year, the Munich Security Conference was dominated by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. This time around, the Gaza War has remained a notable absence in Munich, at least on the confab’s main stage.

This was confirmed on Sunday, the last day of the conference, which was light on headlines amid the snowy Munich outside. The big news story Sunday didn't even originate from the conference, but in reports suggesting U.S. and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia next week for talks to end the Ukraine War without the participation of Ukraine or other European countries.

There was no mention of the Gaza War, nor the broader situation in the Middle East, in the speeches by Vice-President J.D. Vance, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or (less surprisingly) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Yet one year ago, the conference was convened against the backdrop of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that Israeli troops would march into Rafah in search of “total victory.” At that time, at least 28,985 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, when 1,200 Israelis were killed and over 250 hostages were taken during a Hamas attack against Israel.

In the 2024 Munich Security Conference, then-EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell used his speech on the main stage to note that peace in the Middle East required “a prospect for the Palestinian people” and warned that Russia could exploit double standards’ accusations against Europe for its behavior vis-a-vis Ukraine and Gaza. One year afterwards, the official figure for casualties among the Gazan population stands at 46,707 (the real death toll is probably higher).

Borrell’s successor Kaja Kallas did not have a slot of her own for a speech at the conference. It was von der Leyen, contrary to last year, who provided on Friday an address to the audience for the European Union. Kallas, more aligned with von der Leyen than Borrell, has been far less outspoken about Gaza, focusing most of her attention on Ukraine. Her key message ahead of the Munich meeting was that the U.S. strategy towards Ukraine is one of “appeasement.” Once in Bavaria, she drew on the shopworn analogy to the 1938 Munich agreement to establish parallels between the Czech Republic back then and Ukraine nowadays. She said that “it is for us to support them [Ukraine] so that there would not be any World War.”

Meanwhile, a fragile ceasefire holds in Gaza, with three Israeli hostages exchanged for 369 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday. Still, it remains unclear whether the current pause in fighting will continue in the near future.

As Washington resumes the delivery of heavy MK-84 bombs to the Israeli army, the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Netanyahu today. Referring to the U.S., Netanyahu stated that "we have a common strategy" but "we can't always share the details of this strategy with the public, including when the gates of hell will be opened, as they surely will if all our hostages are not released until the last one of them."

Rubio was expected to advocate for President Donald Trump’s proposal to take control of the Gaza Strip and relocate its more than two million residents — in what would represent a further step in Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign.

Although Trump’s exact intentions for Gaza are somewhat uncertain, Netanyahu has previously signaled approval for the president’s ideas. Prior to Rubio’s meeting with Netanyahu, the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he hoped to see the relocation of the Palestinian population out of Gaza starting in the coming weeks.

In an event reserved to the press on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, relatives of the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza explained they want the ceasefire to move to phase two. According to the plan, this second phase should see the release of the remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

Also on Friday, in a conversation during the conference, the Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said that those who supported Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 should be modest enough not to criticize Trump’s recent ideas about the future of Gaza, which he described as “new” and “original.” He added that “it is time to think differently from all the things that failed in the past.”

On Saturday, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Commissioner-General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini expressed his relief about the ceasefire continuing to hold in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages that day. Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency dedicated to supporting Palestinian refugees, denounced Israel’s anti-UNRWA campaign which has included billboards and commercial ads seeking to de-legitimize the agency’s work.

Lazzarini, speaking only meters away from where U.S. Senator and UNRWA opponent Lindsey Graham was standing after participating in a panel on NATO and the U.S., added that the agency is “a casualty of this war.” In January 2025, two laws approved by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, entered into force banning UNRWA from operating in Israeli-occupied territories and prohibiting Israeli authorities from contacting UNRWA. Lazzarini noted the measures impact UNRWA’s work but do not prevent its activities.

The Munich Security Conference leaves European officials asking themselves what future relations with the U.S. will actually look like. In few countries are these doubts so obvious as in the host of the conference, Germany, only one week before national elections on February 23 that are likely to see Chancellor Olaf Scholz replaced by the centre-right contender Friedrich Merz.

In remarks likely welcomed by the demonstrators at the Odeonsplatz in central Munich demanding that Germany deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, Merz announced in a panel discussion that he would support providing these weapons to Ukraine in consultation with Germany’s European partners. According to a recent poll, 60% of Germans oppose delivering Taurus and this had been Scholz’s position on the matter.

In a comment that served as a recap of the Munich Security Conference, the conservative German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungnoted that U.S. officials brought “devastating news for Germany and Europe this week.”

In the wake of that, Germany “seemed paralyzed.” This year’s conference will have something akin to an epilogue tomorrow, when French President Emmanuel Macron convenes the main European leaders in Paris in what the BBC describes as “an emergency summit on the war in Ukraine.”