Israel has pulled the diplomatic rug out from under the Netherlands, revoking the credentials of Dutch officials stationed in the West Bank and giving them just seven days to surrender their Israeli-issued papers, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced late Sunday.

The move is Jerusalem's answer to a Dutch trade ban that took effect on September 22, blocking the import, purchase or sale of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — territories the international community considers occupied. Trade with Israel within its internationally recognized borders is unaffected.

Suitcases, Searches and a Seven-Day Clock

Dutch and Israeli media reported that customs officers at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport have begun searching the luggage of passengers arriving on flights from Israel, checking for settlement-made goods now barred from the Dutch market. Once the seven-day window lapses, Israel says the "diplomatic privileges and immunities" it granted to the Dutch representatives in Ramallah will simply expire.

The Dutch measure did not happen in isolation. It follows a coordinated push by roughly a dozen Western governments — including Britain and France — to sanction settlement-linked goods, part of a broader pushback against settlement expansion in territory where an estimated 500,000 Israeli settlers live alongside roughly three million Palestinians. Notably, Israel has so far singled out the Netherlands for this particular retaliation even though London and Paris have floated similar restrictions.

"If the Netherlands wishes to continue representing its interests with the Palestinians, it may do so from Palestinian Authority territory, rather than from the territory of the State of Israel," Sa'ar said, adding that "Israel will not ignore measures intended to harm it."

Sa'ar also used the announcement to accuse The Hague of failing to confront antisemitism domestically — a charge the Dutch government has not yet publicly addressed. The diplomatic freeze-out is not without precedent: Israel expelled Dutch representatives from a Gaza aid coordination center back in August, and it has previously shuttered the British consulate's operations in Jerusalem over similar friction.

Washington is watching nervously. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee reportedly called the escalating spat "insane," a sign that even Israel's closest ally sees the tit-for-tat sanctions spiraling in a direction nobody particularly wants.

The Netherlands has not yet issued a formal response to the credential revocation. With the seven-day clock now running, the question is whether The Hague blinks, relocates its West Bank diplomatic presence to Palestinian Authority territory as Sa'ar suggested, or escalates further — potentially dragging the rest of the European bloc considering similar settlement-goods bans into the fray. Either way, the standoff is shaping up as an early test of how far Israel is willing to go to punish European allies turning up the economic pressure over settlements.