BDS Nederland is proud to announce the public launch of the Apartheid Free Zone (AFZ) network in the country.
The AFZ campaign is one of several campaigns by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is a Palestinian-led global movement for freedom, justice and equality. The BDS movement upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. In the Netherlands the BDS movement is represented by Stichting Diensten- en Onderzoekscentrum Palestina (docP), also referred to as BDS Nederland.
The AFZ campaign creates an international network of progressive, intersectional spaces that are committed to refrain from providing any kind of support to Israel’s system of apartheid, occupation and genocide. The campaign welcomes a wide spectrum of organisations as potential AFZs, including commercial and local businesses, cultural venues, sport associations, religious centres, unions, political parties and social spaces. Each type of organisation is expected to meet a set of minimum requirements. These can be fulfilled progressively to achieve AFZ status and advance in line with the campaign’s mission. There are more than a thousand AFZs across the world.
The AFZ campaign in the Netherlands, which is run completely by volunteers, is a collective response to years of impunity and Dutch complicity in Israeli crimes. The overwhelming majority of Dutch citizens surveyed in the past 2 years believe that Israel has waged a genocidal campaign on the people of Gaza, that the Dutch government should have stopped supplying weapons to Israel and should review its relations with it entirely. Yet, we are still waiting for the government to take concrete measures to end Dutch complicity. The AFZ campaign represents a rising voice of public dissent, transforming solidarity into concrete, principled and sustained actions.
With this communication, we announce a significant milestone in our community-building journey: Thanks to the tireless work of our volunteers over the past two years, more than 60 AFZs have joined our campaign. This is an important milestone as this growing network not only demonstrates increasing solidarity with Palestine within Dutch civil society but also fulfils a public need for transparency: It allows people of conscience to ensure that the spaces they participate in do not contribute to the maintenance of a genocidal apartheid regime nor benefit from human rights violations. The diverse list of participants is now available on our website.
We wish for international law to prevail, paving the way for the end of occupation, recognition of fundamental rights of all Palestinians and the right to return for Palestinian refugees. We cannot remain passive while impunity persists and injustice prevails. We will therefore continue to build and organise, and we will not stop until all of the Netherlands becomes an Apartheid Free Zone.