What was going through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind when he forced German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to choose between a meeting with him and one with the B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence human rights groups? Hard to believe that Netanyahu assumed a senior politician of a major European power would bend his will to that of a foreign leader and give into the prime minister’s ultimatum by scrapping his planned meeting with the human rights groups.

How would German Chancellor Angela Merkel have explained such a surrender to her citizens? After all, Gabriel did not ask to meet with any law-breaking settlers from illegal West Bank outposts who attack Palestinians, beat Israeli peace activists and pelt Israeli troops with stones (actions about which Netanyahu is stingy with his posts and tweets). The members of B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence are law-abiding citizens. And Netanyahu has, after all, championed the approach whereby anything not proven to be illegal is legal. That includes a steady supply of cigars and champagne to the Netanyahu household by business people, to cite an unrelated example (a scandal currently under police investigation).

While treading on safe ground in Israeli public opinion, as my colleague Mazal Mualem wrote here, Netanyahu and his band of merry men and women are trampling on Israel’s foreign relations. With their other foot they are crushing Israelis’ right to protest, which is the very life and soul of a democracy. The crisis over the Israeli human rights organizations operating in the occupied territories is one of the inevitable side effects of the occupation, with which Netanyahu has not only learned to live, but also to take advantage of them for his personal political benefit. But the disagreement over the meetings with Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem disguises dangerous trends, exceeding short-term electoral considerations in both Jerusalem and Berlin.

The last line of the announcement by the prime minister’s office on the cancellation of the meeting with Gabriel says that “our relations with Germany are very important and they will not be affected by this.” Obviously, Germany will not sever ties with Israel over this incident and others like it. Nonetheless, the strident clash with the German foreign minister joins a series of troubling signs in the Jerusalem-Berlin relationship. In February, Germany canceled a meeting between Israeli ministers and their German government counterparts, scheduled for May in Jerusalem. Official sources in Germany told reporters that the cause was not a “scheduling conflict,” as reported by the German side, but rather Germany’s growing frustration with the recently adopted Regularization Law legalizing wildcat Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and the prime minister’s declarations about plans to expand the settlements.