German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has expressed his opposition to an "immediate cease-fire" in Gaza, instead repeating German calls for "humanitarian pauses."

"I freely admit that I don't think the calls for an immediate cease-fire or long pause — which would amount to the same thing — are right because that would mean ultimately that Israel leaves Hamas the possibility of recovering and obtaining new missiles," he said in a debate organized by the German regional daily Heilbronner Stimme.

Germany abstained on a UN vote on October 26 calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

He also repeated calls, made by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Saturday while visiting the West Bank and Israel, that Israel's response to the Hamas attacks must be in accordance with "international humanitarian law" and that there should be "no attacks by settlers against the Palestinian population in the West Bank."

"Our goal must now be that, after all the terrible things that have happened there and the suffering of the Palestinian citizens due to Hamas holding them as hostages, there is then a perspective that makes a two-state solution possible: Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but then maybe for the best without Hamas," Scholz said.