Dutch court rejects lawsuit from rights groups seeking to halt arms sales to Israel

This Monday Aug. 26, 2019 file photo shows the outside of The Hague District Court. (AP Photo/Aleks Furtula)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -

A Dutch court on Friday rejected a bid from human rights groups to block weapons exports to Israel and trading with the occupied territories, after finding there were sufficient checks already in place to comply with international law.

The ten organizations told The Hague District Court last month that they thought the Netherlands was in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drawn up following World War II, by continuing to sell weapons to Israel more than a year into the conflict.

“The government uses my own tax money, that I pay, to kill my own family. I’ve lost 18 members of my own family,” Ahmed Abofoul, a legal adviser for the pro-Palestinian organization Al-Haq, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit, told the court during a hearing in November.

An Israeli airstrike on Thursday killed at least 25 Palestinians and wounded dozens more, Palestinian medics said. The strike on a multistory residential building in the Nuseirat refugee camp was just the latest in a series of Israeli attacks throughout Gaza.

The court ruling said that “it is not up to the interim relief judge to order the state to reconsider government policy. That is primarily a political responsibility.”

Lawyers for the government argued it wasn’t up to a judge to decide foreign policy for the Netherlands.

The activist groups pointed to several emergency orders from another court, the International Court of Justice, as confirming the obligation to stop weapons sales. In January, the top UN court said it was plausible Palestinians were being deprived of some rights protected under the Genocide Convention.

The coalition said it will review the court’s ruling and is considering an appeal.

In November, the International Criminal Court, issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defence minister and Hamas’ military chief, accusing them of crimes against humanity in connection with the 13-month war in Gaza.

The warrants said there was a reason to believe that Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid and had intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza — charges Israeli officials deny.

Earlier this week, the United Nations said humanitarian aid to north Gaza has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, leaving between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity or health care, according to the world body.