Dutch shipments of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel can continue, court says

By Stephanie van den Berg

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A Dutch court on Friday dismissed demands by human rights groups to block the Dutch government from exporting F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, which they said were enabling war crimes committed in the besieged Gaza strip.

Judges at the District Court in The Hague said they must leave the Dutch government a large degree of freedom when it comes to weighing political and policy issues in deciding on arms exports.

The rights groups, which included the Dutch affiliate of Oxfam, said Israel was using the planes in attacks in Gaza that were killing civilians in large scale bombings that may constitute war crimes.

Preventing that was more important than the Netherlands fulfilling its commercial or political obligations to allied countries, they argued.

The Netherlands houses one of several regional warehouses of U.S.-owned F-35 parts which are then distributed to countries that request them, including Israel.

The judges did agree it was likely that F-35's contributed to the Gaza bombing campaign and possible violations of the laws of war.

But they said they could only rule on the question whether the government had made a reasonable assessment in allowing exports to continue and said there was "no space for a preliminary relief judge to intervene".

Israel denies committing war crimes in its attacks on Gaza, which followed the Hamas cross-border raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 240 were taken hostage.

Since then, Israeli forces have besieged the coastal strip and laid much of it to waste, with nearly 19,000 people confirmed dead, according to Palestinian health officials, and thousands more feared buried under the rubble.

(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg and Bart Meijer, Editing by William Maclean and Elaine Hardcastle)