Angela Merkel and Benjamin Netanyahu Warn Iran of Sanctions in Nuclear Dispute

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on a visit to Germany on Thursday that one lesson Israel drew from the Holocaust was that threats to its existence could not go unchallenged and must be "nipped in the bud".

Photo: Angela Merkel and Benjamin Netanyahu Warn Iran of Sanctions in Nuclear Dispute

German journalists handed the Israeli leader, in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, a portfolio of 29 plans from the Auschwitz death camp discovered last year.

With his wife Sara at his side, Netanyahu said her father's family had been nearly wiped out by Nazis in World War Two, Reuters informs.

"There is not much time" to halt Tehran's nuclear ambitions, Netanyahu told reporters.

"I think the most important thing that can be put in place is what the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called crippling sanctions. It is possible to put real pressure, real economic pressure, on this regime if the major powers of the world unite," AFP reports.

Merkel called for a “substantial change” in Israel’s Jewish settlement policy in the West Bank. While saying the details are complex, she insisted that settlements must not hamper progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

She said it’s “crucial” to use a window that’s open until the fall, saying time is running out to reach an Israeli- Palestinian agreement. Both sides are at a “decisive” moment, she said.

The Palestinians “also need to make contributions,” Merkel said, without elaborating, Bloomberg reports.