The Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office has announced plans to probe the criminal complaint lodged against Booking.com, an online vacation rental platform. The complaint, filed by a coalition of human rights organizations, alleges that Booking.com has listed rental properties situated in Israeli settlements. These organizations, which include the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), the Rights Forum, and the Palestinian civil society Al-Hag, made the complaint public recently, though it was originally filed in November 2023.
According to the claim by these NGOs, Booking.com, by facilitating the leases of vacation homes on land taken from the indigenous Palestinian population, is generating profits from war crimes. The suit references anti-money laundering legislation and Article 1(4) of the Dutch International Crimes Act, or ‘Wet Internationale Misdrijven’, that explicitly bans profiting from war crimes. It is argued that the “profits of crime” accrued by Booking.com enter the Dutch financial system, constituting money laundering.
Investigations conducted from July 2022 to 2023 by these human rights organizations discovered 70 listings — 13 in East Jerusalem and 57 in other regions of the West Bank — on Booking.com. As per the NGOs, these listings could be deemed as “deceptive practices ignoring international law”. Such practices result in gains from human rights abuses and help maintain the illegal settlements.
The International Court of Justice and the Dutch Government have both recognized these Israeli settlements as illegal. Moreover, in 2020, the UN Human Rights Council added Booking.com to its blacklist of businesses aiding Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. This list was created in 2016. Human Rights Watch had also previously expressed concerns in 2018 regarding travel firms such as Airbnb and Booking.com allegedly abetting the existence of these settlements.
Currently, prosecutors are reviewing the complaint, but have not shared a specific timeline regarding the next steps.