The Dutch incoming center-right government’s coalition agreement foresees to study the possibility of moving the country’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The draft agreement was published on Thursday. It still needs the endorsement of all four parties’ parliamentary factions. And they still need to choose a new Prime Minister.
It follows the November general elections in the Netherlands, in which the pro-Israel, far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders received the highest share of the vote with 37 seats out of 150 in the Dutch lower house.
“Taking into account the solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and diplomatic interests, we will explore when the embassy can be moved to Jerusalem at an appropriate time,” the coalition agreement states.
The coalition is set to include the Party for Freedom, the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the New Social Contract party (NSC) and the Farmer–Citizen Movement.
The 26-page draft accord also calls for Holocaust education to be included in the Dutch naturalization test and tougher policing of “discrimination, racism, antisemitism and hatred against Muslims.” Dutch asylum and immigration protocols would be reviewed.
“We are making history today. We do this together as four political parties. A collaboration that I am very much looking forward to. But the Freedom Party, my own party, will also be in the cabinet,” Geert Wilders said at a press conference.
“We go from being the largest opposition party to being the largest government party, in one go. And the sun will shine again in the Netherlands,” he added.
The next Prime Minister has not been designated yet and discussions about a possible candidate continue between the four parties. Wilders confirmed in March that the other parties could not support him taking up the highest office because of .
Wilders lived in Israel for two years during his youth and has visited the country more than 40 times. After he graduated from secondary school, he spent a year as a volunteer at Moshav Tomer in the Jordan Valley.
The politician has been a proponent of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, having said repeatedly that “there has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946: the Kingdom of Jordan.”
“Palestinian people should be given the right to voluntarily settle in Jordan and freely elect their own government. Let the Hashemite Kingdom become a true democracy!” Wilders tweeted during the 2021 war in the Gaza Strip ( “Operation Guardian of the Walls”), and again following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
In 2018, Wilders tweeted, “The more Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria the better for that land is Jewish—and Jordan is Palestine!”
During a meeting in Amsterdam with Israeli President Isaac Herzog earlier this year, Wilders pledged his “full support” for the war against Hamas terrorism.
If the Netherlands decides to move its embassy to Jerusalem, it would become the sixth country to do so after the US, Papua New Guinea, Kosovo, Honduras and Guatemala. Israel sees the moves as strengthening its claim to the city as its capital, though most foreign countries situate their embassies in or around Tel Aviv.