Activities

• According to its website, “PAX is a partnership between IKV (Interchurch Peace Council) and Pax Christi. In 2006, the two organisations merged under the name IKV Pax Christi. As of 29 January 2014, the new name of the organisation is PAX.”
• PAX claims that it “supports the work of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, facilitates regional dialogue, and improves the human security of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the C areas.”

Political Advocacy

• PAX accuses Israel of “stealthy ethnic cleansing” and claims that “The Israeli government does not want a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.”
• PAX, along with Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) and Oxfam Novib (and Cordaid until January 2016), formed the organization United Civilians for Peace, which advocates for BDS campaigns against Israel and partners with highly politicized NGOs.
  • In April 2016, Amin Abu Rashed, reportedly a Hamas operative, participated in a workshop organized by UCP on “Gaza/Palestine.”
  • In a 2013 film about the Israeli elections, UCP interviewed individuals from radical NGOs, including Eitan Bronstein Aparicio of Zochrot, Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, and Mohammed Zeitan of the Arab Association for Human Rights.
• According to PAX, “The opportunity to bring about a two-state solution is receding due to the continual expansion of settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. The settler movement is very influential in Israeli politics.”
  • PAX carries out lobbying and “advocates in Brussels, in Israel and in the Netherlands for international pressure regarding this policy.”
• PAX lists the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) as one of its programs.
  • The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) was founded by the World Council of Churches (WCC). EAPPI sends volunteers to the West Bank to “witness life under occupation.” Upon completion of the program, the volunteers return to their home countries and churches where many engage in anti-Israel advocacy, including advocating for BDS campaigns in churches, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, and other delegitimization strategies.
• In February 2025, PAX published a report claiming, “since the start of the Israeli attack on Gaza in October 2023, European and American banks and asset managers have played an important role in spelling the Israeli war chest. In doing so, these institutions run a high risk of contributing to large-scale human rights violations, war crimes and genocide in Gaza.”
• In January 2025, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, PAX published a statement affirming, “In addition to a sustainable ceasefire, we must also look further at a sustainable future. The root causes must therefore be tackled: an end to the entire occupation, inequality and apartheid.”
• In September 2024, PAX released a statement ignoring the existence and responsibility of Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy army in Lebanon, claiming “Israel must be made very clear that escalation of the war towards the north will not be tolerated.”
• In November 2023, PAX, alongside Amnesty International, Oxfam Novib, and the Rights Forum, announced they were suing the Netherlands for “continuing to export arms to Israel.” The lawsuit demanded “the immediate cessation of the supply of parts for Israeli F35 fighter planes.” 
  • On February 12, 2024, the Dutch Court of Appeal ruled that the Netherlands must cease transfer of US-owned F-35 fighter jet components to Israel. 
  • In May 2024, the NGOs started summary proceedings against the Netherlands, claiming the “state did not correctly implement the previous ruling by not stopping all export and transit of F-35 components with a possible final destination of Israel.” In July 2024, the judge rejected the case, claiming that “it was unclear whether the earlier ruling only covered direct deliveries from the Netherlands or also deliveries via other countries, such as the United States. This ruling means that deliveries via the United States will not be stopped.”
  • On September 6, 2024, the Supreme Court held a hearing to assess whether the Court’s ruling will stand and whether the Netherlands may resume the export of F-35 components to Israel. 
  • In October 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the “Court of Appeal should not have ruled that the export of F-35 components from the Netherlands to Israel should be halted. That assessment is up to the State. The Supreme Court therefore ruled that the State must reassess the export license for F-35 components to Israel within six weeks.”
• In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Oct 7th attack, PAX published a statement claiming, “The Hamas attack cannot be seen in isolation from the desperation caused by the illegal occupation, the blockade and the lack of law…That is why the root causes must be addressed.”
• In May 2023 PAX Netherlands held a lecture titled “75 years of Nakba: the Palestinian past/present.” The lecture featured Salah Hamouri, a lawyer at PFLP-linked Addameer, who was arrested and convicted in 2005 for “attempting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef…and for his involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” According to Addameer, Hamouri was banned from entering the West Bank until September 2016, following his release in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011. (Hamouri was released in December 2011 as part of a swap of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit). Upon his release in 2011, according to the PFLP, Hamouri stated that “there is no option for the Palestinian people except resistance because it is the only way for us to achieve our people’s rights, our freedom, and our self- determination.” 
• In February 2022, PAX published a report titled “Does apartheid exist in Israel and occupied Palestine?” calling for the Netherlands to “commit to international investigations into apartheid in Israel and occupied Palestine” and to “draw up a list of effective countermeasures against violations of international law by the State of Israel. This should include both measures which can be taken unilaterally and measures taken in EU context with like-minded countries.”
• In January 2022, PAX was a signatory on a letter to the Dutch Foreign Minister condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs, as terrorist organizations. According to the letter, “The agenda behind these campaigns is entirely clear. They seek to shield Israel from exposure and accountability for its grave violations of international law and human rights, enabling it to entrench its occupation, expand its annexation and deepen its apartheid in Palestine – and all of that with impunity.”
• In May 2018, published “Fragmented Jerusalem,” a publication that claims “the decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has already had a highly detrimental effect, sparking both renewed Palestinian violence and a resumption of initiatives to expel Palestinians from their homes on disputed land in Sheikh Jarrah.”
  • “Fragmented Jerusalem” relies exclusively on reports and interviews with political advocacy NGOs Ir Amim, Emek Shaveh, and Terrestrial Jerusalem
• In June 2017, to commemorate 50 years since the Six Day War, PAX hosted a workshop for participants to “develop ideas in a co-creation process that can creatively and innovatively deal with the consequences” of the security barrier.

BDS Activities

• PAX supports a boycott of “products from settlements” and calls on citizens, the business community and investment companies in the Netherlands to cooperate with this international pressure by not buying products from Israeli settlements.
• PAX is a member of the Don’t Buy into Occupation coalition, a “joint project between 25 Palestinian, regional and European organisations based in Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK), and Palestine” that “investigate[s] and highlight[s] the financial relationships between business enterprises involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” Other pro-BDS NGOs involved in the campaign include Al-Haq, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), European Legal Support Center (ELSC), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), and The Rights Forum.
  • In September 2025, PAX published a joint NGO report titled, “Trading with Illegal Settlements: How Foreign States and Companies Enable Israel to Implement Its Illegal Settlement Policy.” The NGOs called on countries to “Adopt and implement legislation that explicitly bans trade, including the provision of services and investments, with settlements,” and “identify and prevent forms of support—financial, commercial, trade, diplomatic, military, logistical or other—that aid or assist the maintaining of Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory.” The report also called for bilateral agreements between Israel and other states to “be revisited and redrafted to prohibit trade, including the provision of services and investments, with Israeli settlements.”
  • In November 2024, as a member of the Don’t Buy into Occupation coalition, PAX published a joint report alleging “the extensive involvement of over 800 European financial institutions in companies aiding and abetting the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The NGOs called on “financial institutions to adopt heightened due diligence measures, using their leverage to ensure clients and investee companies comply with international law and divesting from those that fail to do so. It also calls on businesses involved in the Israeli settlement enterprise to withdraw from settlements and halt any contributions to their establishment, expansion, or maintenance.”
  • In June 2024, Don’t Buy into Occupation published a joint report titled, “The companies arming Israel and their financiers,” claiming to “expose the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.”
  • In December 2023, Don’t Buy into Occupation jointly published a report on “European Financial Institutions’ Continued Complicity in the Illegal Israeli Settlement Enterprise.” The report called for financial institutions to “Take action to end financial support for companies active in the settlements in the OPT, either through strictly time-bound engagement or through responsible divestment.”
  • In September 2021, as part of the campaign, a coalition of NGOs published a report purporting to “investigate and expose the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” The report called for European governments to “prohibit the import of illegal settlement products and services from entering European markets, and ban trade with and economic support for illegal Israeli settlements.”
• In May 2025, PAX published a statement, “Full arms embargo now.” According to the statement, “It is bizarre and unjustifiable that the Netherlands still cooperates militarily with Israel in various ways, including the export and import of weapons. Complicity must stop. A full arms embargo must be imposed immediately.”
• In April 2025, PAX called on the Netherlands to “adjust military cooperation with Israel” and “use all possible political, economic and diplomatic means to put pressure on Israel.”
• In March 2025, PAX questioned, “How long will we let Israel get away with war crimes without serious political and economic consequences?…The Netherlands must take an unambiguous stand and take concrete measures against these persistent violations of international law.”
• In February 2025, PAX urged the Netherlands to “demand an end to Israel’s human rights violations at a meeting on the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
• In February 2025, PAX signed a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, calling to “ban all trade and business between the EU and Israel’s illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem.”
• In October 2023, PAX launched a petition calling on the Dutch government to “impose sanctions on Israel for serious violations of international law” and “not to supply weapons to Israel.”
• In April 2023, PAX published a statement claiming, “The least the Netherlands can do is to make military cooperation with Israel conditional on the prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations and war crimes…military cooperation with Israel should of course be ended completely. It is simply morally unsellable to cooperate with an occupier, not in Europe and not in the Middle East.”
• In June 2020, PAX,  alongside Oxfam Novib and the Rights Forum, hosted a webinar on “understanding business activities related to illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a major human rights problem, and presenting ways to end the complicity of Dutch/European economic and political actors with the settlement economy.” The webinar endorsed the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel.
• In April 2013, IKV PAX co-wrote a report, “Dutch Economic Links with the Occupation,” which “explores trade and investment relationships between companies located in Israeli settlement or profiting from the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights on the one hand, and the Netherlands on the other hand.” The report notes that “extensive use was made of the online database ‘Who Profits,’” an Israeli NGO that initiates international BDS campaigns targeting Israeli and foreign banks, security companies, civil infrastructure facilities, and private companies. It supports BDS campaigns around the world in finding target companies.
• Was a signatory to the 2012 report “Trading Away Peace,” which repeats the BDS agenda and calls on EU and individual European governments to wage political warfare through various forms of economic sanctions against Israel.