On 15 June 2026, Al-Haq sent a letter of appreciation to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Tom Berendsen. Al-Haq strongly welcomes the national import ban on goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements passed by the Dutch cabinet on 22 May 2026. While this legislation is a clear positive first step towards ending third-state complicity in Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime and illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, Al-Haq calls for the legislation to be urgently expanded to include, at a minimum, a prohibition on all services and investments linked to illegal Israeli settlements. Absent services, the legislation risks becoming a symbolic rather than an effective step towards meeting the Netherlands' international legal obligations.

We note that the Netherlands has stated that it will investigate further legal options with regard to services and investments.1 There exists a clear basis in international law for encompassing services in the ban. In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (‘Palestine Advisory Opinion’) confirmed that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. Israel’s presence in the OPT breaches peremptory norms of international law, including the prohibition against acquisition of territory by force, the rights of peoples to self-determination, and the prohibition against racial discrimination and apartheid. Accordingly, the ICJ ruled that Third States have certain obligations erga omnes to bring the unlawful occupation to an end as rapidly as possible. Specifically, the ICJ ruled that Third States are obligated:

Not to recognise any changes in the physical character or demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the territory occupied by Israel on 5 June 1967, including East Jerusalem, except as agreed by the parties through negotiations and to distinguish in their dealings with Israel between the territory of the State of Israel and the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. This encompasses:

• to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.2

• to abstain, in the establishment and maintenance of diplomatic missions in Israel, from any recognition of its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and

• to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or parts thereof which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory;

• the obligation to abstain from treaty relations with Israel in all cases in which it purports to act on behalf of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or a part thereof on matters concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or a part of its territory;

The ICJ Palestine Advisory Opinion makes clear that Third States are obligated under international law to take positive steps to prevent all trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Israeli settlements. Third States must, therefore, adopt a complete embargo against economic dealings with Israeli settlements, including services. We recall for example, that following Russia’s acts of aggression against Ukraine, the EU intensified sanctions in 2022 with economic sanctions targeting “Russia's financial, trade, energy, transport, technology and defence sectors, as well as services provided to Russia or to Russian nationals”. Al-Haq urges the Netherlands to meet the gravity of Israel’s acquisition of Palestinian territory through the use of force and breaches of intransgressible principles of international law with sanctions and countermeasures that are commensurate to the magnitude of the internationally wrongful acts. Israel’s continued impunity for internationally wrongful acts is epitomised in its open erasure of the Palestinian people, killings, torture, land appropriation, mass destruction of property, pillage of natural and national resources, forced transfer and replacement with Israeli settlers, fragmentation and the genocidal destruction of the Palestinian group.

While Al-Haq strongly welcomes the national import ban on goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements as a step towards implementing national obligations in line with international law and the ICJ Palestine Advisory Opinion, Al-Haq urges the Dutch government to extend its legislation to encompass all services and investments, as the obligation clearly exists under international law.