German Chancellor Angela Merkel weighs on Middle East issues  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement last week that he intended to annex the Jordan valley in the occupied West Bank, saying it hurt efforts to negotiate a peace deal.

“The German government backs an internationally negotiated peace solution in the sense of a two-state solution … annexations are always detrimental to peace solutions. They do not help and therefore we do not agree,” said Merkel at a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

The plan announced by Netanyahu, who faces a closely fought election on Tuesday, was “a disaster for any attempt to push two-state solution forward”, said King Abdullah.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday suggested she wanted to stick to Germany’s halt in arms exports to Saudi, saying she did not see any reason to change the government’s stance and Berlin had tied its position to the development of the war in Yemen.

“At the moment I don’t see any prerequisites for the government to change its position,” Merkel told a news conference.

In Yemen a Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Houthis for over four years in a conflict widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Muslim rival Iran. Merkel said events in Yemen showed work on a political solution was urgently needed.

A German government source said on Monday that Merkel’s government would extend a halt on arms exports to Saudi Arabia, pointing to the war in neighboring Yemen and the Social Democrats’ refusal to drop opposition to lifting the moratorium.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a return to an international deal curbing Iran’s nuclear activity as the only way to defuse tensions in the Middle East.

“We believe that the deal to stop Iran from acquiring military nuclear capabilities is a building block we need to get back to,” Merkel said during a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

“But there is also a long list of other burdens coming from Iran like the ballistic missiles program and its engagement in Syria,” she said. “In recent days tensions in the region rose and Germany will always be in favor of deescalation and long-term solutions are only possible through a political process.”