Berlin's Left Party is moving to expel a lawmaker from its parliamentary group over her outspoken opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza, escalating an internal dispute that threatens to complicate coalition negotiations following the party's election victory.
In the Sept. 20 election, Vanessa Emde won a direct mandate in her Neukölln district, which is heavily populated with immigrants from the Middle East and Türkiye.
Emde has been accused of questioning Israel's right to exist, despite signing a party platform affirming it. She also recently joined a protest against her own party leadership outside a Left Party congress, explicitly expressing solidarity with a pro-Palestinian activist.
The party leadership has now agreed to draft a motion to exclude Emde from its parliamentary group, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
The group's 44 lawmakers are expected to vote in two weeks. Expelling Emde would require a two-thirds majority, or at least 30 votes. It is unclear whether such a broad majority exists among the Left Party lawmakers, though the leadership assumes it does.
For many, Emde is emblematic of a problem the Left Party has in the German capital with critics of Israel, up to and including so-called anti-Semites within its own ranks.
Others have questioned just how much control Elif Eralp, the party's candidate for mayor, has over the rank and file.
Weeks after the election, figures at the federal level in both the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, the Left Party's likely coalition partners in Berlin, are warning against joining forces with the party, partly because of Emde.
Emde said she's not going anywhere.
"Of course I will continue to exercise my mandate," she said in a statement. "Democratically acquired mandates are not a subject for negotiation."
As a so-called city-state, Berlin is one of Germany's 16 federal states, representation in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament.
In the state election, the Left Party became the strongest force with 25.7%. The Berlin branch of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) came in second, with 18.8%. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was third with 16.3%, followed by the Greens with 14.3% and the SPD with 12.1%.
The results meant that the outgoing Berlin government - a coalition of the CDU and SPD - lost its majority, leaving the election's winner, The Left, to try to form a governing alliance.
