The company has shareholders around the world. One group of investors understands the attacks on Gaza until all Israeli hostages are back. The other group believes that Israel has no right to exist. And a lot of choosing no side. This, says the spokesperson for a listed company with activities in the Netherlands Off The Recordis the world in which his employer is located. “The more international the company, the more difficult it is to say something about this. The baker on the corner can find everything. We don’t.”
Off the record? A spokesperson? Doing business with Israel – and talking about it all publicly – appears to be on eggs. And so it has always been.
Nevertheless, Dutch companies sell a lot to Israeli companies and governments every year. That trade increased sharply in 2021 and has remained high since then. Sales to Israel reached a peak in 2022 of around 5 billion euros, show the youngest definitive figures from Statistics Agency CBS. From trucks to scanning equipment and from medicines to devices for telecommunications. In turn, the Dutch bought 2.7 billion euros in things from Israel that year. Especially fruit and vegetables, chemical products, rough oil and electrical appliances.
In addition, in 2023, Dutch companies had between 32 and roughly 50 billion euros in investments in Israel. This is apparent from figures Van Eurostat and De Nederlandsche Bank, which the Multinational Companies Research Foundation published this summer. That makes the Netherlands by far the largest investor in European countries, although, according to former Minister Veldkamp (Foreign Affairs, NSC), this gives a somewhat distorted picture. At the beginning of August he wrote to the Chamber: “Of these investments, more than 20 percent comes from letterbox firms, about 5 percent from other transfer companies and around 70 percent from companies that produce or have employees in the Netherlands. Of these non-financial companies, more than 95 percent are part of a foreign multinational. So there are mainly foreign capital flows via the Netherlands.”
Last Friday, Veldkamp left the outgoing cabinet. The Minister stated that he wanted to impose sanctions on companies that do business with Israeli companies in occupied territory, but that coalition parties VVD and BBB stop that. Sanctions will therefore not come for the time being, not even for business projects in occupied areas such as the West Bank.
NRC asked ten large companies that act with Israeli partners if they had discussions about continuing their trade in the last year and a half. Yes, at the coffee machine, some say, but that remains informal.
Public opinion
In Norway it is different. Under pressure from the Norwegian public opinion, the huge government investment fund, which manages around 1,800 billion euros from oil and gas income, announced this month having sold his shares in 11 (of 61) Israeli companies. Namur did not make it known. According to the fund, those investments helped to finance the Netanyahu government in Gaza.
Nicolai Tangen, head of the fund, said, according to Reuters news agency, that the sale was inspired by ‘exceptional circumstances’. “Gaza is in a serious humanitarian crisis.”
And what do Dutch companies say? Three listed companies keep it to more or less general terms. Chip machine ASML, which has two branches in Israel: “All worldwide humanitarian issues touch us deeply. ASML operates within the international laws and regulations and the specific guidelines of the Dutch government.”
Supermarket chain Ahold-Delhaize: “The amount of human suffering is terrible and affects us deeply. The international community must find a solution for this as quickly as possible. For purchasing products, our brands adhere to the applicable laws and regulations about which areas it is permitted to buy in this.
And (care) technology group Philips, with a branch in Israel, says: “Philips believes passionately in access to high -quality health care, precisely in regions that have to do with the consequences of conflict and war.”
At a family business such as the VDL Eindhoven, which in Israel sells, among other things, electric buses, it does not sound different: “The humanitarian situations worldwide are very dear to us. As a company, we operate within the framework of Dutch and European policy and (inter) national sanctions are leading for us. We are confident that our political leaders make the congestion of the Bijbewanging Bijbewanging Bingfewage Bijbewaging Bingfewage Bijbewags Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen Bijbewagen. for policy. “
In short: only if the government prohibits doing business with Israel would they withdraw from the country.
Sanctions
Sanctions make sense, says Dawid Walentek, associate professor of political economy at Ghent University and sanction expert. “If the EU had not imposed substantial sanctions on Russia three years ago, the Russian troops would now be really closer to KYIV. Sanctions make it harder to buy weapons and other things.”
The fact that Foreign Affairs states that Dutch companies are “discouraged to invest in the occupied territories in Israel,” has little to do, Walentek underlines. “It [zaken doen] is not forbidden. “
Dutch companies are honest, says Walentek. They often say openly: there is so much to earn in Israel! “American or British companies would never say that.”
Maybe they would rather stay under the radar. Because what Walentek now sees in the US happening: “Companies that criticize the Netanyahu government are told that their affairs in the US will suffer. The US government is very active in that area.” According to Walentek, Dutch companies with interests in the US also look out with criticism.
If the EU had not imposed major sanctions on Russia, the Russian troops would now be really closer to Kyiv
At the end of 2016, some American governments, such as the state of New York, are blacklisting on a blacklist when they critically exploit the construction of homes by Jewish settlers occupied by Israel occupied Palestinian. The critics would be anti -Semitic. That happened, among others, ASN Bank, Triodos Bank and Engineering firm Haskoning, then HaskoningDHV. In New York, the companies involved had to prove within three months that they did not boycott Israel. Often they defended themselves By stating that they have been doing business with Israeli companies for a long time.
For example, HaskoningDHV also responded, which worked on large projects in Israel. Among other things, it designed metro stations in Tel Aviv, together with the Dutch engineering firm Arcadis.
Asked whether Haskoning has changed the policy now that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the company responds differently than in 2016: “We regularly evaluate developments. For some time a travel ban has been in connection with the safety of colleagues and the reluctance with regard to new projects in Israel. Given the very worrying situation, we have decided to do no new assignments.”
Haskoning, it says, had no more projects in the areas occupied by Israel. Is there internal discussion about projects in Israel? The spokesperson: “Haskoning is a multicultural company with employees from more than eighty countries, so there is indeed a discussion about this.”
Politically undesirable
Herke Plantenga, founder and owner of Webhoster Novoserve in Enschede (25 employees), thinks differently. He works together with the Israeli industry colleague Jetserver. Plantenga: “Novoserve does not work with countries on which an embargo rests, such as Iran, North Korea and Russia. That does not apply to Israel. It is free to do business with that-and we do that too. What politics as undesirable, does not change the current insight or the vote in the country.”
Moreover, Plantenga also sees other conflict areas in the world, where rules are left or not. “Gaza is a point of attention, especially in our Western media. There is no silence on other conflicts that make many civilian casualties. That is why we follow the legal guidelines and do not participate in other people’s assessment of the state of affairs in an area or country.”
With the cooperation of Merve Özdemir