Germany has decided to cancel a promised 30% discount on the price of the three or four gunboats Israel is expected to buy, according to a report in Ha’aretz.
The discount is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Chancellor Angela Merkel made the offer to Prime Minister Netanyahu in February, at a meeting between the German and Israeli cabinets in Jerusalem.
Merkel’s national security advisor Christoph Huesgen told Israel this week that the discount on the boats won’t be approved by the German parliament because of the breakdown in the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Huesgen even denied the promise was even made in February.
The peace talks collapsed after the Palestinian Authority decided to merge with the Hamas terrorist organization.
Last week, during her visit to Israel, U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice denied that US President Obama had asked Merkel to place pressure on Israel.
German officials said, according to the Ha’aretz report, “Merkel had taken note of Obama’s statements, but that these did not exert a decisive influence on her decision.”
The gunboats are needed to protect Israel’s offshore drilling stations from terror attacks.