Coalition Challenges Prosecutor’s Prolonged Failure to Act on Booking.com Complaint Before Dutch Court of Appeal  

On 9 April 2026, our coalition of ten Palestinian and Dutch organisations filed a complaint with the Dutch Court of Appeal challenging the prolonged failure of the Dutch Public Prosecutor to reach a decision on our criminal complaint against Booking.com for profiting from the commission of war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). 

Through an ‘Article 12 procedure’, we are asking the Court to assess the merits of the complaint and decide whether the prosecutor must proceed with a criminal investigation. 

The original criminal complaint, filed on 8 November 2023, accuses Booking.com of laundering profits generated through listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. These settlements are part of Israel’s unlawful settlement enterprise, established and maintained through war crimes, including the transfer of Israel’s population into occupied Palestinian territory. By providing reservation services for hotels and holiday rental properties in those settlements and channelling the resulting profits through the Dutch financial system, Booking.com is profiting from war crimes in violation of Dutch anti-money laundering legislation.  

Under Dutch criminal procedure, there is no specific time limit for the Prosecutor to take a decision on this matter. That means they could delay the ‘preliminary investigation stage’ indefinitely, effectively shielding Booking.com from accountability.    

Cases involving war crimes deserve rigorous legal scrutiny. We have acted accordingly: we allowed time for the preliminary examination to take place and made two further filings to support that process with additional evidence and legal arguments.  After two and a half years, we can no longer accept this unconscionable delay under the guise of ‘careful review’.  

While the Prosecutor has sat on this complaint, settlement expansion, forced displacement, and settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have all continued to intensify. Research by the organisations involved in this case also shows that, in the first year after the complaint was filed, Booking.com sharply increased its listings in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem. In other words, while the Dutch authorities have failed to properly investigate our complaint, the business model at the heart of the complaint has continued. 

The Prosecutor’s inaction is unconscionable. The issue here is not simply administrative slowness. This continued failure to act on a complaint concerning corporate profits derived from an unlawful settlement economy built on dispossession, annexation, and war crimes, sends a worrying signal to corporations – that they can continue to aid and abet such crimes with complete impunity.  
While the Prosecutor remained inactive, Palestinians continued to face forced displacement and violence, settlements continued to grow, and Booking.com continued to derive profit from that unlawful reality. This investigation cannot remain frozen while the underlying crimes escalate, and their economic beneficiaries continue profiting.  

This appeal is about more than Booking.com alone. It is also about whether the Dutch legal system will treat corporate complicity in war crimes with the seriousness such cases demand. When prosecutors allow a complaint of this magnitude to stagnate, despite escalating harm and growing evidence, they undermine confidence in the rule of law itself. It is crucial that the Prosecutor takes immediate action to enforce the law and hold Booking.com accountable for laundering the proceeds of serious international crimes being committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  

Willem Jebbink, the criminal lawyer who filed the complaint on behalf of the coalition, stated: 
“While cases involving war crimes are generally complex, we believe that this particular case — concerning the profiting from war crimes — is comparatively straightforward to prove. I have never seen the Public Prosecution Service take approximately two and a half years to investigate a complaint without reaching any conclusion. My clients consider a criminal investigation to be urgently necessary, as war crimes continue to be committed in the West Bank.” 

The Court of Appeal now has the opportunity to act. The Court must direct the Dutch Public Prosecutor to move forward with the prosecution of Booking.com as a matter of the utmost urgency 

Legal battles cost money. Help us hold Booking.com accountable — contribute to this fight against a company that profits from occupation.