STATEMENT: DSP WITHDRAWS FROM CO-organising the nakba commemoration in amsterdam

28 April 2026

Dutch Scholars for Palestine (DSP) is an association of scholars and university staff members committed to solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination. We mobilise for the boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions complicit in the genocide, oppression, exile, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people and the colonisation of Palestinian lands. We also (co-)organise events in collaboration with scholars, activists, and community members to educate our colleagues, students, and more broadly, members of the Dutch public, on Israel’s occupation, colonisation and system of apartheid.

As part of the latter, DSP was involved in co-organising the Nakba commemoration taking place on 15 May 2026 in the Dominicus Church in Amsterdam. The Nakba - or catastrophe - marks the dispossession of Palestinians that started in 1948 and the ongoing colonisations of Palestine. The aim of this event is to remember the Nakba as a historical catastrophe, but also a call to confront its ongoing reality. It seeks to address the genocide being inflicted on the Palestinian people today, as well as the escalating settler violence in the West Bank. At the same time, it calls on the Netherlands and other European Union member states to take responsibility for their role in sustaining this injustice: to end their complicity, impose sanctions on Israel until Palestine is free and sovereign, and help build meaningful solidarity as a form of accountability for the suffering, destruction, and dispossession they have helped make possible.

The program for the commemoration includes several speakers and artists. Due to the participation of a representative of the Palestinian Authority (PA), DSP had a conversation which resulted in a vote to withdraw as co-organizers from this event. DSP has to acknowledge the complicity of the PA in the suppression of the Palestinian people for decades.

Therefore, we regrettably have to withdraw from being co-organizers of this event as DSP, and ask for the name of DSP to be removed from the publicity for this event.

The PA has been complicit in the suppression of the Palestinian people for decades. Through security coordination with Israel, it plays a direct and active role in the prosecution and murder of Palestinians in the West Bank, for example through its regular campaigns against Jenin which often result in the killing of young men in the camp. The PA is also implicated in, and benefits directly from, economic collaborations with the occupation. The Palestinian Security Forces (PSF) receive American training in Jordan and Jericho and regularly arrest Palestinians who engage in various forms of activism, including activists, journalists and university students. The PSF also conduct regular raids that target students at Birzeit University in line with similar campaigns by Israeli occupation forces. 

Further reading:

Understanding the PA and its security and economic collaborations with the occupation:

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Americans training the PSF: 

Crackdown on Jenin:

Arrest and killing of activist Nizar Banat:

Crackdown on protests in Ramallah:

Attack on students:

In Arabic: 

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