The Netherlands wants to ban goods from Israeli-occupied territories, but achieving this is a conundrum

The Hague. It will be a complicated boycott. The Dutch government has recently announced that it will bring into force a ban on the import of all products from territories occupied by Israel, effective from 22 September for the next three years. The measure will be adopted following intense pressure from certain quarters of the political sphere and public opinion, which the centre-right government led by Rob Jetten has decided to accommodate. “Israel continues to undermine its international legal obligations and the two-state solution,” explains Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen (CDA). “We can no longer stand by and watch.” The Netherlands thus joins several European counterparts – Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Slovenia – which have already imposed various forms of trade embargo against Israel and its settlements. Yet, at all levels of the supply chain, there is some concern regarding the effective implementation of the decree.

The ban – which applies to the occupied settlements in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza, should the settlers return – is not limited to the import of goods, but also extends to their subsequent sale throughout the Netherlands. These are mainly various types of foodstuffs, representing a turnover of tens of millions of euros: wine, citrus fruits, dates, pomegranates and sesame-based products. Under the current provisions, economic sanctions and criminal penalties in the event of a breach of the ban would fall directly on the companies involved. And this is where the first major problem arises. Tracing the exact origin of these products is an extremely complex task: Dutch customs authorities will have to verify postcodes of origin, monitor logistics flows and detain suspicious consignments. This will require extra time and resources. But it will probably not be enough. The risk of forged certificates of origin remains high, and the generic label ‘made in Israel’ tends to cover a significant proportion of shipments to the European Union: according to a recent investigation by the NGO Global Echo Litigation Centre, 19 per cent of the shipments in question examined over the last eight years were found to originate from the occupied territories, despite the labelling provided by Israeli manufacturers stating otherwise. Many Dutch companies would thus end up continuing to sell prohibited goods without realising it.

It remains to be seen, then, how the Netherlands believes it can carry out this unilateral boycott. Prime Minister Jetten had simply stated on several occasions that he did not wish to “contribute financially to an illegal occupation and the maintenance of unauthorised settlements”. Beyond symbolic opposition, the enforceability of the ban remains a conundrum: both the Council of State and the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) have expressed various concerns in this regard – indeed, even some ministers in Jetten’s own government have admitted the objective difficulty of the measure. As the daily newspaper de Volkskrant points out, the most vulnerable players in the supply chain are supermarket chains and kosher food shops, which have long been targeted by pro-Palestinian activists. The other sensitive aspect is precisely the polarisation of the debate: the progressive electorate has welcomed the announcement of the ban, whilst conservatives and local Jewish communities are denouncing its potentially discriminatory repercussions – thereby leaving themselves open to attack from the far right, which, through Geert Wilders, accuses the Jetten government of ‘embracing an ideological and anti-Israeli agenda’.

It does not help that anti-Semitism has been rising sharply in recent years, both in the Netherlands and across Europe: the bomb attack on a Jewish school in Amsterdam last March is a barometer of the latent tension amongst the population. The embargo against the occupied territories is based on valid grounds under international law, but it is by no means certain that the Netherlands will be able to uphold it. Nor to put it into practice.