The Netherlands will ban imports of goods from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel announced on Wednesday, after lawmakers put pressure on his caretaker government.
Van Weel during a debate in parliament described The Hague’s latest move against Israel as drawing a “line in the sand” over the Hamas war.
The Dutch parliament had previously debated legislation to prohibit the import, sale and promotion of products produced by the 500,000-plus Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, but the legislation failed to garner a majority.
The center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)—the largest faction in the Netherlands’ government since the right-wing Party for Freedom and centrist New Social Contract (NSC) party withdrew—resisted national action, preferring European Union-wide measures.
However, with the E.U.'s 27 countries divided, VVD lawmaker Eric van der Burg said Wednesday that the party now backs a national boycott.
According to Van Weel, The Hague’s boycott can be arranged “as soon as possible,” with an administrative order based on existing sanctions laws.
Then-Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp and four other ministers from his New Social Contract party withdrew from the coalition on Aug. 22 after failing to push through sanctions against Israel in the Cabinet.
Veldkamp said he lacked confidence in his ability in the coming months to implement anti-Israel moves, after having declared Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich persona non grata in July.
Veldkamp also wanted to advance a boycott on goods made by Jews in Judea and Samaria. Other Cabinet members argued that such a boycott should only be introduced at the European level, while some flatly rejected new measures.
“It’s important that the Cabinet still chose to follow NSC’s lead and takes additional measures against the Israeli government,” the party’s leader, Eddy van Hijum, said in an X post on Thursday morning.
However, Van Hijum said he was also “surprised and astonished” by the VVD’s move after “blocking Minister Veldkamp just several weeks ago.”
The Dutch government collapsed on June 3, ushering in an Oct. 29 snap election, after Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom left the coalition after others failed to back his plans to toughen immigration policies.
The Party for Freedom had entered the coalition some six months after its surprise victory in the Netherlands’ November 2023 general election, striking a deal with the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and New Social Contract parties, as well as the Farmer-Citizen Movement.
Initially described as the most pro-Israel government in the history of the Netherlands due to its promise to move the country’s embassy to Jerusalem, The Hague became one of Europe’s most vocal critics of the Jewish state.
