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On 3 September 2025, the Dutch Court of Appeal will hear a case brought against the Dutch government by Al Haq, Al-Mezan, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and Dutch NGOs Een Ander Joods Geluid (EAJG), European Legal Support Center (ELSC), Groningen Jabalya, Netherlands Palestina Komitee, SOMO, Stichting Kifaia, and Stichting Palestina, and is supported by Erev Rav and Plant een Olijfboom.

The case demands an end to the Netherlands’ role in enabling Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its unlawful military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land. These actions are not isolated policies, but central pillars of a Zionist settler-colonial project rooted in forced displacement, land theft, and racial domination. The appeal challenges a ruling issued by The Hague District Court in December 2024, which acknowledged the Dutch state’s obligations under international law but declined to enforce them. The court accepted the government’s position that arms exports could proceed under a “case-by-case” licensing framework, even though the International Court of Justice determined that plausible genocide is being carried out in Gaza, and the Dutch territory remained actively involved in transferring weapons used in that context. The court deemed the government’s “discouragement policy” on trade with illegal settlements as sufficient, without evaluating its effectiveness or consistency with international law. In doing so, the court affirmed a model of governance in which legal commitments are treated as symbolic, accountability is optional, and bureaucratic procedures replace political responsibility. This appeal is a direct challenge to a system that reduces state complicity in atrocities to a matter of bureaucratic discretion. The Netherlands’ entanglement in Israel’s regime of apartheid and colonisation is not new. It reflects a longer arc of European complicity in Zionist state-building and the violent reordering of Palestinian land, demography, and sovereignty. As a former colonial power, the Netherlands has reconstituted its relationship to empire through trade, surveillance, and weapons supply. These entanglements expose the lie of European neutrality. For decades, Dutch governments have offered diplomatic cover, economic protection, and logistical access to a state that has made the subjugation of Palestinians its governing principle.

Links:
Infrastructure of genocide: the case confronting Dutch support for Israel’s war machine

Ruling in the case A coalition of ten Dutch and Palestinian NGOs are accusing the Dutch State of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza and to ensure Israel respects international law – Appeal

Volgens het gerechtshof Den Haag bestaat er een ernstig risico dat Israël genocide pleegt in Gaza en het humanitair oorlogsrecht schendt