The Netherlands’ new ban on goods from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights has branded the Druze town of Majdal Shams, where a Hezbollah rocket killed 12 children on a soccer field in 2024, an illegal Israeli settlement. The ban, which took effect on September 22 and carries prison terms of up to six years, sweeps in all four Druze towns on the Golan, a territory the Palestinians have never claimed. It rests on the false claim that Israel occupies these lands, drawn from a non-binding International Court of Justice opinion that never addressed the Golan at all. And like the boycott campaign that shut down SodaStream’s factory in Mishor Adumim and cost some 500 Palestinians their jobs, the Dutch ban strikes hardest at the Palestinian workers who earn double the local wage in Jewish-owned businesses in Judea and Samaria.
Two summers ago, the Druze town of Majdal Shams buried its children. On the evening of July 27, 2024, a rocket fired from Lebanon struck a soccer field in the town, killing 12 children and teenagers between the ages of 10 and 20. A siren sounded, but the warning came too late for them to run. Four of the dead were brothers from a single family. The IDF identified the rocket through forensics as an Iranian-made Falaq-1, the same model Hezbollah announced it had fired that day.
This week, the Netherlands declared Majdal Shams an illegal Israeli settlement.
The Dutch ban on goods from Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which took effect on September 22, applies to every community on a European Union postcode list of Israeli settlements. That list includes all four Druze towns on the Golan: Majdal Shams, Mas’ade, Buq’ata and Ein Qiniyye. It also includes the Alawite village of Ghajar. The EU put the Druze towns on the list knowing exactly who lives there. Its 2016 edition labels each of them “A Druze locality in the Golan.” Majdal Shams, the largest town on the Golan, is home to about 11,500 people. Buq’ata was founded in the 1880s by families from Majdal Shams. These are old, native communities, and none of them fits any definition of a settlement. Under Dutch law, apples and cherries from the orchards of Majdal Shams are now contraband in Amsterdam, and a Dutch traveler who brings them home faces seizure and possible criminal prosecution.
The Golan adds a second absurdity. European governments justify boycotts of Judea and Samaria in the name of Palestinian rights. The Palestinians have never claimed the Golan. Israel captured the Heights from Syria in 1967, and the Palestinian Authority, the PLO and every Palestinian faction have never presented it as part of any Palestinian state. The ban in the Golan protects no Palestinian, because no Palestinians live there. The only non-Jewish communities it reaches are the Druze and the Alawites.
The Druze are a distinct faith. Their religion emerged in Egypt in the 11th century CE, and though it grew out of Ismaili Islam, the Druze do not practice Islam, do not observe its pillars and do not consider themselves Muslims. Their religion has been closed to converts for a thousand years. In Israel, Druze from the Galilee and Mount Carmel serve in the IDF, and many have fallen in its wars. The Druze of the Golan have followed a separate path, with many holding Syrian citizenship alongside Israeli permanent residency. Whatever their citizenship, the Dutch list treats their homes as a Jewish settlement.
Israel365 News owes readers a correction on this point. In yesterday’s article on the Dutch ban, we reported that Arab-made products from the same hills remain legal and that the only merchants affected are Jews. That is accurate for Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, where the EU list covers only Jewish communities. It is inaccurate for the Golan, where the list also covers four Druze towns and an Alawite village.
Yesterday’s article also requires an update on the inspections at Schiphol Airport. The account of Israeli passengers being singled out came from an opinion piece by passenger Sivan Behr on the Dutch site NieuwRechts. Two other passengers from the same El Al flight have since told The Times of Israel that the checks were more limited. Max Worms, a Dutch passenger from Oosterhout, said officers called about 15 arrivals to screening after baggage claim, X-rayed his luggage without opening it, confiscated nothing, and never mentioned settlement products during a check lasting about 15 minutes. A second passenger, a Dutch woman living in Israel, said she was not stopped at all. Dutch Customs says nationality, religion and appearance are not grounds for inspection.
The ban itself is real. Schiphol now displays a sign warning travelers that it covers personal luggage, and the Dutch passenger who photographed it said, “this is our new welcome now.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry has warned Israelis heading to the Netherlands that they could face “long and invasive baggage checks.” Jerusalem has already retaliated, with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar ordering Dutch diplomats in Ramallah to return their Israeli-issued credentials within seven days. Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen called the move unnecessary and insisted the ban is not directed against Israel.
Ironically, while Dutch law prohibits bringing these products into the country, it does not prohibit terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre of Israelis from entering the country. This summer, the Dutch government invited more than 40 Palestinians from Gaza to study or work in the country. One of them, a 22-year-old student at Maastricht University, posted a video of himself watching footage of the October 7 massacre, pointing at a terrorist on screen and saying, “This is me.” The university had applied for his residence permit, and Dutch immigration authorities approved it. The university has provisionally suspended him but is not investigating his claim, which remains unconfirmed. Dutch lawmaker Diederik Boomsma asked, “Was he even screened?”
The Dutch government rests its ban on international law. According to the decree’s explanatory memorandum, the measure relies in particular on the International Court of Justice’s July 19, 2024, advisory opinion, which declared the occupation unlawful and referred to a duty of third states to prevent trade that helps maintain it. The Dutch cabinet has said it shares the court’s position that Israel’s presence in both the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights is unlawful.
But, in point of fact, the court said no such thing about the Golan. The ICJ’s 2024 opinion was requested by the UN General Assembly on Israel’s policies in what it called the “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” and it addressed Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and Gaza. The Golan was outside the question the court was asked. The Netherlands has taken a court opinion about Palestinian claims and applied it to Druze towns in territory the Palestinians have never claimed.
The opinion is also non-binding. The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation, a Dutch legal think tank, notes that advisory opinions sit in a different legal category from the court’s binding judgments, a distinction the court itself has repeatedly affirmed. The group also points out that neither the opinion nor the UN resolutions cited by the Dutch government call on states to criminalize private trade between their citizens and producers in these areas. Before the ban was adopted, the same organization argued that Dutch law provides no adequate basis for it, and that a nonbinding General Assembly resolution falls short of what the Dutch Sanctions Act requires. The Israel Products Centre, the Christian-run importer in Nijkerk, joined with the European Jewish Association to seek an injunction against the ban. A Dutch court dismissed their objection.
British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, a former clerk to the president of Israel’s Supreme Court, and a woman whose family goes back eight generations in the Land of Israel, argues that the entire premise of “occupied territory” collapses under a basic rule of international law called uti possidetis juris. Under that rule, a newly independent state inherits the administrative boundaries of the entity that preceded it unless those boundaries are changed by agreement. When Israel declared independence in 1948, it inherited the borders of the British Mandate for Palestine, which included Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. “You cannot occupy what is your own sovereign territory,” Hausdorff has said. She notes that the ICJ’s 2024 opinion simply assumed occupation without ever addressing uti possidetis. The same rule, she points out, is the reason the world considers Crimea part of Ukraine, yet in her words, “international law is thrown out when it applies to the Jewish state.”
UK Lawyers for Israel laid out the broader legal case in written evidence to a House of Commons committee. The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, the group noted, explicitly directed Britain to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land,” and Article 80 of the UN Charter preserved those rights. When Jordan invaded Judea and Samaria in 1948 and expelled its Jewish communities, only Britain and Pakistan recognized its claim to the land, and Jordan later withdrew it. The 1949 armistice agreement that created the “Green Line” stated explicitly that its lines were dictated by military considerations alone and prejudiced neither side’s claims. The territory remains disputed, and its final status has never been settled by any binding agreement.
The group’s submission also reaches the Golan. It argued that Israel acquired the eastern part of Jerusalem in a defensive war and holds a stronger claim to it than any other state, citing former ICJ President Stephen Schwebel, and added that the same reasoning applies to the Golan Heights. Israel captured the Heights in 1967, after years in which Syrian artillery on the plateau shelled Israeli farming communities in the Hula Valley below. In 1981, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, applying Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration to the territory. In March 2019, President Trump formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, making the United States the first country to do so. The EU postcode list the Netherlands relies on includes a Golan community called Trump Heights, named in the president’s honor. Under the Dutch ban, a bottle of wine made there is contraband in Amsterdam.
The same submission goes straight at the question of trade. Even if a residential community was considered a breach of the Geneva Conventions, the group argued, it does not follow that operating a business near one would violate international law. It cited the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in Richardson v DPP, which found no evidence that the Ahava cosmetics factory at Mitzpe Shalem, near the Dead Sea, encouraged or assisted any unlawful transfer of population. A French appeals court reached a similar conclusion in 2013 about the Jerusalem light rail. Courts in Britain and France declined to treat business activity in these areas as unlawful. The Netherlands has made it a crime punishable by six years’ imprisonment.
UK Lawyers for Israel also told Parliament that establishing a viable Palestinian economy should be the highest priority for Britain and the international community. The group urged Britain to direct its aid toward coexistence projects and viable Palestinian businesses, citing a British government-commissioned evaluation that found private-sector employment in Judea and Samaria appeared to reduce conflict, while unemployment and public-sector payrolls did not.
Boycotts do precisely the opposite. The best-known example is SodaStream. For years, the company’s factory in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone employed 1,300 workers, including 500 Palestinians and 450 Arab citizens of Israel, working alongside 350 Israeli Jews. Palestinians in the zone earn double to triple the usual wages in the Palestinian areas. Staff and management told reporters that pay and benefits were identical for workers in comparable jobs, regardless of citizenship or ethnicity. The BDS movement made the factory a prime target, lobbying stores worldwide to pull SodaStream’s products and campaigning against its spokeswoman, actress Scarlett Johansson. SodaStream closed the plant in 2015 and moved production to the Negev. CEO Daniel Birnbaum attributed the move to business needs, but BDS declared victory. Roughly 500 Palestinian workers lost their jobs. The last 74, who had followed the company to its new plant on temporary permits, were let go in 2016 when the permits were not renewed. One of them, Mohammed Jaradat, who had worked at the factory for seven years and was supporting four children, said BDS activists “need to find us jobs before they close factories.”
Pieter van Oordt of the Israel Products Centre made the same point about the Dutch ban, noting that his suppliers in Judea and Samaria employ large numbers of Palestinians and that the ban strikes thousands of workers who earn their living there. Palestinians employed by Jewish-owned businesses in Judea and Samaria earn on average more than double the wages paid at Arab-owned businesses in the same areas. On the Golan, the ban strikes Druze farmers who have no connection to the Palestinian cause at all.
In the same week, the Netherlands welcomed a man boasting of October 7 and outlawed the fruit of the town that buried 12 children murdered by Hezbollah. The Druze trace their faith to a man the Bible honors above almost any outsider, and the Bible records that his descendants received a place in the Land of Israel. The Druze venerate Jethro, the Midianite priest who became Moses’ father-in-law, as their chief prophet, known in Arabic as Nabi Shu’ayb, and Druze tradition holds that they are his descendants. Each spring, Druze from across Israel gather at his traditional tomb near Tiberias. The Bible records Jethro as the first outsider to recognize God’s hand in the Exodus:
“And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done to Israel, in that He had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Jethro said: ‘Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh.'” (Exodus 18:9-10)
Rashi, the 11th-century CE commentator, explains that one of Jethro’s names, Yitro, comes from the Hebrew yeter (addition), because he added a section to the Bible: the system of judges he advised Moses to establish. The Talmud in Tractate Sotah (11a) teaches that Jethro served as an adviser to Pharaoh and fled rather than participate in the plot against the Hebrews. As his reward, his descendants merited seats in the Lishkat HaGazit (Chamber of Hewn Stone), the Sanhedrin’s seat on the Temple Mount.
Moses promised Jethro’s family a share in the land. As Israel prepared to leave Sinai, Moses pleaded with his father-in-law to come with them:
“And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law: ‘We are journeying unto the place of which the LORD said: I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the LORD hath spoken good concerning Israel.'” (Numbers 10:29)
Rashi identifies Hobab as Jethro himself and, citing the Sifrei, explains what that “good” was. When Israel divided the land, the rich territory of Jericho was set aside and given to Jethro’s descendants. The Book of Judges confirms that they came into the land: “And the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went up out of the city of palm-trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which is in the south of Arad; and they went and dwelt with the people.” (Judges 1:16) The city of palm-trees is Jericho.
Jethro’s clan also settled in the north. The Bible records that Heber the Kenite, of “the children of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses,” pitched his tent by Kedesh (Judges 4:11), in the Upper Galilee near today’s border with Lebanon. It was Heber’s wife, Jael, who killed Sisera, the Canaanite general who oppressed Israel from the north, and the prophetess Deborah sang her praises: “Blessed above women shall Jael be, the wife of Heber the Kenite.” (Judges 5:24)
Moses promised Jethro’s children the good that God had spoken concerning Israel, and the Bible records that they received it: a portion in Jericho, a home among the people of Judah and tents in the north. Three thousand years later, the Netherlands has put the Druze towns of the Golan on the same list as the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria. Europe has drawn its line through the land and found the children of Moses and the children of Jethro standing on the same side of it, exactly where the Bible placed them.
