Geert Wilders won a landslide victory in the Nov. 22 election, possibly paving the way for the most pro-Israel coalition in the Netherlands’ history.
By JNS
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority over the weekend condemned Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who led the Netherlands’ Freedom Party to a landslide victory last week, after he said Palestinians should be offered the right to settle in Jordan and elect their own government.
The Ramallah-based P.A. denounced Wilders’s statements as “a call to escalate the aggression against our people and a blatant interference in their affairs and future,” according to the P.A.’s Wafa news agency.
Hamas, which the European Union has designated as a terrorist organization, accused Wilders of making a “fascist statement that violates international law” and called on the United Nations to condemn the Dutch politician’s positions.
Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen and the Arab League issued similar denunciations, Politico reported on Saturday.
“Hamas complaining about international law,” Wilders mockingly responded in a post on X (formerly Twitter), ending with a clown emoji.
Hamas complaining about international law ????#Hamas https://t.co/5JHGL73s0X
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) November 25, 2023
Wilders’s controversial Freedom Party won a landslide victory in the Netherlands’ Nov. 22 general election, possibly paving the way for the most pro-Israel coalition in the European nation’s history.
According to results released last week, Geert Wilders won 38 of the 150 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives, more than double the 17 he won three years ago. The shock win gives him a chance to lead talks to form a new ruling coalition and possibly become prime minister.
Wilders has been an outspoken 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 May 2021 Hamas war against Israel, and again following the terror group’s Oct. 7 attacks.
In 2018, Wilders tweeted, “The more Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria the better for that land is Jewish—and Jordan is Palestine!”
Notably, the statement “Jordan is Palestine” was first coined by King Abdullah I of Jordan, who established the Hashemite monarchy and annexed Judea and Samaria after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Following World War I, British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill had gifted the land east of the Jordan River—until then part of “Palestine” according to the League of Nations Mandate—to Britain’s wartime ally Abdullah for his own kingdom.
Although 70% of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, Palestinians remain vastly under-represented in the country’s governing institutions.