Palestinians watch as a fire blazes near the village of Tell, west of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on July 18, 2026, after a reported arson attack by Israeli settlers on the village, according to eyewitnesses. Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH \/ AFP<\/p>\n
The Hague: The Netherlands government announced Tuesday that it would ban imports of ‘goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements located in the Palestinian territories’\u00a0from September 22.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Netherlands will join Ireland, Belgium and Spain among European Union countries that have imposed restrictions on trade with territories occupied by Israeli settlers.<\/p>\n
There have been growing calls for the 27-nation bloc to impose EU-wide restrictions over Israel’s military action in Gaza and increased violence in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is considered illegal under international law. And the Dutch foreign ministry said: “With the proposed measures, the Netherlands is reinforcing its commitment to fulfilling its international legal obligation not to contribute to this unlawful situation.”<\/p>\n
The ban will apply to “the import, purchase, and sale of goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements located in the Palestinian territories”, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and more than 500,000 settlers now live in the territories alongside some three million Palestinians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Global Echo non-government group, which pursues legal cases for Palestinians against the occupation, said in a report released in June that the Netherlands accounted for a third of agricultural exports from Israel’s settlements and nearly half of the total sent to the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Palestinians watch as a fire blazes near the village of Tell, west of Nablus in the occupied West…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6,5021,5020],"class_list":["post-32697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-netherlands","tag-netherlands","tag-qatar","tag-the-peninsula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}