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As you read these lines, our claimant, Abed J., is sitting with his ill mother and his sister in a tent in the south of the Gaza Strip. Just 150 metres away, a missile struck a tent camp a few days ago. The Israeli attack killed six people.
“We do not feel safe at all,” he writes to us in his latest affidavit. “We expect an Israeli airstrike to hit us at any time.”
These words are more than an account. They are the core of a constitutional complaint that Abed J., supported by our Palestinian partners and us, submitted to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. And they are the reason why we have now filed an urgent application.
Credits: Fuad Alymani
The term “ceasefire” promised safety. The reality in Gaza is different. The Israeli army continues its attacks. Its use of tanks has also been documented – tanks, which are regularly equipped with German transmissions manufactured by the company Renk. Without these transmissions, the Israeli tank battalions would not be operational. For more than two years, tanks have constituted the backbone of military operations in Gaza’s densely populated areas. Again and again, they attacked tent camps, at food distribution points, in the midst of the civilian population.
Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier. In August 2025, the German government imposed a partial halt of new export licences – it has already lifted it. New export licences can be granted and exported at any time.
We have been supporting Abed J.’s litigation efforts since October 2024. His application for interim legal protection before the Frankfurt Administrative Court: dismissed. His appeal to the Hessian Higher Administrative Court in Kassel: dismissed. In October 2025, we filed a constitutional complaint in Karlsruhe. But Karlsruhe needs time – time which, in Gaza, can mean the difference between life and death.
The now submitted urgent application seeks to ensure that no further tank transmissions are delivered before the Court has ruled. At its core lies the question: Is Germany fulfilling its constitutional duty to protect – also vis-à-vis people outside its own territory?
UN bodies, the International Criminal Court, and human rights organisations have been documenting the gravest violations of international law in Gaza for more than two years: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Anyone authorising the export of tank transmissions to Israel contributes to a form of warfare in which serious crimes under international law are systematically committed. International law applies universally – also in Gaza. Those who, in practice, exempt Israel from the general rules of international law create a space of lawlessness. The Palestinian civilian population is reduced to bare life, stripped of rights, and exposed to violence.
In our last newsletter[1], we introduced you to the work of the Palestinian artist Fuad Alymani. His animated drawings capture what photographs cannot: the duration of suffering, the repetition of terror. Images that look back at us and tell the story of Abed J.
In his most recent statement to us, Abed J. writes that living conditions have “improved somewhat.” Aid deliveries now reach some camps. He received a bag of flour. Food parcels with canned goods, rice, pasta, and oil. Sometimes there is free food from field kitchens. Water tanks pass by occasionally. However, his mother urgently needs spinal surgery. It cannot be performed in Gaza. Like thousands of others, she is waiting for the Rafah crossing to open. Her health has deteriorated drastically since her husband and three of her children were killed. She suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and neurological disorders. This is everyday life in a tent camp, 150 metres from the next bomb impact.
The coming year will be decisive. For the proceedings in Karlsruhe. For the people in Gaza. For the question of whether Germany will live up to its responsibility – or continue to enable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
We will keep fighting. In court. In public. With legal means. Because the law must apply – to everyone, everywhere.
Legal proceedings often seem abstract: case numbers, deadlines, instances, past crimes. This case is different. It is not about the past, but about what keeps repeating itself. Not about justice in retrospect, but about protection here and now. People are waiting for the law to protect them. Now.
Legal work is demanding. Cooperation with our partner organisations in Gaza takes place under extreme conditions. We cannot enter Gaza; almost no one can leave. Every contact, every statement, every piece of research requires enormous effort and significant resources.
Your donation enables us to pursue this case with the necessary vigour. It enables us to stand, in 2026 as well, with those who are waiting for the law to provide justice and protection.
Thank you for your solidarity.
Yours,
Dr. Alexander Schwarz
Dr. Alexander Schwarz is a lawyer and Co-Director of ECCHR's Program Area on International Crimes and International Responsibility. In this capacity, he supports victims and survivors of human rights violations and serious international crimes before national and international courts.
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