Dutch Court Throws out Case Against Ex Israeli Generals

A Dutch court based in The Hague said Wednesday it has no jurisdiction in a war crimes case against Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief opponent in the upcoming March 2 parliamentary elections.

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The case brought against Gantz and another defendant, Amir Eshel, by Ismail Ziada, a Dutch-Palestinian man is seeking damages from the ex-generals for the role they played in the killing of six members of his family during the 2014 Gaza war. 

Ziada lost his mother, three brothers, a sister-in-law, a 12-year-old nephew, and a friend when the family home was bombed by the Israeli air force on July 20, 2014.

Gantz was chief of staff of the Israeli defense force (IDF) and Eshel commanded the air force during that time.

"The district court has ruled that the Dutch court is not competent to hear the case because the former Israeli officials have functional immunity from jurisdiction," a judge said.

"This form of immunity, a legal concept in customary international law derived from state immunity, applies to acts carried out in the performance of public duty.”

"The airstrike in the Gaza Strip, in which six of the claimant's relatives were killed, is an example of an act carried out in the performance of public duty," the judge added.

After the hearing, Ziada told reporters that he felt “deep sorrow and disappointment.”

The claimant had decided to sue in a civil court in the Netherlands, claiming he could not seek justice in Israel due to the judicial system's biases against Palestinians. Dutch courts can rule on war crimes committed abroad in civil proceedings for Dutch citizens who cannot get a fair trial elsewhere.

According to Ziada’s lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld, the judges based themselves on a lack of state practice or precedent set by national courts in similar cases.

However, she told Al Jazeera, "They are the state practice,” adding that she thinks their decision was “cowardly.”

Gantz is the leader of the Blue and White party, and he will face Netanyahu for the third election in less than a year after the latter failed to form a government in April and September last year.

In a campaign video released ahead of last year’s April vote, Gantz, who presents himself as a centrist, had bragged about sending parts of the Gaza Strip “back to the stone age.”

The 2014 Israeli war against Gaza lasted seven weeks between July and August of that year and was one of Israel’s deadliest military offensive against the enclave. The war left 2,251 people dead on the Palestinian side, most of them civilians, and more than 11,000 wounded, according to sources from the United Nations. Seventy-four people died on the Israeli side; most of them were soldiers.