Pro-Palestinian groups sue Dutch gov’t for failing to stop Gaza ‘genocide’

The NGOs privation the Netherlands to prohibition the export and transit of weapons, limb parts, and dual-use items to Israel.

Pro-Palestinian organisations person taken the Dutch authorities to court, urging a halt to arms exports to Israel and accusing the authorities of failing to forestall what they termed a “genocide” successful Gaza.

They reason that the Netherlands, a staunch state of Israel, has a ineligible work to bash everything successful its powerfulness to halt violations of planetary instrumentality and the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, successful the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

“Today, the plaintiffs are present to clasp the Dutch authorities accountable for failing to comply with planetary instrumentality by failing to intervene against violations of the rights of the Palestinian radical committed by the authorities of Israel,” Wout Albers, a lawyer representing the coalition, said astatine a civilian tribunal successful The Hague connected Friday.

“Israel is blameworthy of genocide and apartheid” and “is utilizing Dutch weapons to wage war”, Albers added.

The plaintiffs comprise a conjugation of Dutch and Palestinian organisations moving to support quality rights successful the Palestinian territory, with 3 of the groups successful Palestine.

In October, the groups requested the tribunal to “include a prohibition connected the export and transit of weapons, limb parts, and dual-use items to Israel arsenic good arsenic a prohibition connected each Dutch commercialized and concern relations that assistance support Israel’s unlawful concern of Palestinian territory”.

Reporting from The Hague, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said portion the tribunal is “looking into whether the [Dutch] authorities should beryllium obliged to halt sending weapons, the authorities says that this determination is not up to the tribunal to determine and is overseas policy”.

Judge Sonja Hoekstra noted: “It is important to underline that the gravity of the concern successful Gaza is not contested by the Dutch state, nor is the presumption of the West Bank.”

But she said it was astir “finding retired what is legally successful play and what tin beryllium expected” of the government.

She acknowledged it was a “sensitive case”.

Albers said, “today is not astir judging governmental choices, but astir ensuring cardinal respect for the planetary regularisation of instrumentality and extortion against violations of planetary law.”

According to Vaessen, the groups’ demands physique connected erstwhile decisions by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which earlier this twelvemonth ruled that the occupation of Palestine is illegal.

Judge Sonja Hoekstra said it was ‘important to underline that the gravity of the concern successful Gaza is not contested’ by the authorities and ‘nor is the status’ of the occupied West Bank [Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters]

On Thursday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) successful The Hague issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, erstwhile Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s subject commandant Mohammed Deif for alleged “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said his state “respects the independence of the ICC”.

“We won’t prosecute successful non-essential contacts and we volition enactment connected the apprehension warrants. We afloat comply with the Rome Statute of the ICC,” helium added.

It is unclear however acold the lawsuit brought by the pro-Palestinian groups volition go, arsenic the Supreme Court has dismissed respective earlier attempts to clasp the Netherlands to its obligations to forestall alleged violations of the Genocide Convention.

This suit besides builds connected the result of an earlier lawsuit which saw a tribunal ordering the authorities successful February to artifact each exports of F-35 combatant pitchy parts to Israel implicit concerns they were being utilized to interruption planetary law.

Israel’s warfare successful Gaza has killed astatine slightest 44,056 Palestinians and wounded 104,286 since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 radical were killed successful Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day, and much than 200 were taken captive.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies