Nieuws van de afdeling

8 January 2009

Parliament recalled to discuss response to Gaza

An initial refusal of the SP's proposal for a return from recess to discuss the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip with Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has now been reversed. Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs will meet on Friday to debate the matter. SP Foreign Affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel said that he was pleased by the decision: “The Netherlands must condemn this invasion,” he said. “But most importantly it must give no support to the upgrading of the association agreement between the EU and Israel, as recently proposed by the European Commission. This would send completely the wrong message. It is sad that the Dutch government has for the most part had nothing to say about this.”

7 January 2009

Israel versus Palestine: how much longer?

Exactly ten years ago I was in Israel. The country has dominated the news throughout my life and I felt a strong urge to go there. I wanted to talk to people myself: not the powerful, but rather with critical voices from both sides, and with journalists. For a long time I had considered relations there in a somewhat schematic way, but on my return I wrote this: "Good and bad have become almost unusable concepts there. The conflict has been going on now for so long and the mutual hatred has, as a result of the tit-for-tat violence, gone so deep that a solution seems very far away."

3 January 2009

Israeli invasion of Gaza strip: 'Parliament must be recalled from recess’

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel has formally proposed that the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs be recalled from recess in order to meet with Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen to discuss the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The move has already attracted the support of two small opposition groups, the Green Left and the centrist D66. “The Netherlands must condemn this invasion,” Van Bommel says, “and should refuse to support moves to strengthen EU-Israeli relations, as proposed by the European Commission. This would be sending the wrong message.”

1 January 2009

The year of truth

by Harry van Bommel

2009 will be the year of truth.

28 December 2008

Cabinet must condemn Israeli violence

The SP condemns Israel’s excessive and violent actions conducted via air raids on Gaza, and calls on the government to join it in these condemnations.

23 December 2008

Iraq: Senate sets course for parliamentary enquiry

The Senate’s disappointment regarding the answers given by the government to more than a hundred questions on the Iraq war represents a first step towards a parliamentary enquiry. This is the conclusion drawn by SP Senator Arjan Vliegenthart following this afternoon’s deliberations in the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence. “The Senate can do nothing with the answers given,” says Vliegenthart. “The government continues to refuse openness. Now that the VVD has ceased to rule out an enquiry this remains a possibility.” The right wing VVD, now after the SP the second biggest party of opposition, was a member of the governing coalition that took the decision to support the war. “The government has only itself to blame, given the contemptuous way it has treated the Senate.”

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