| ▲ | com 5 days ago |
| The Dutch have a very lackadaisical attitude to law, and at the very same time a very principled cut-off-my-nose-to-spite-my-face rule of law mentality. If I were a senior Israeli or Hamas leader I’d avoid the place for a couple of decades in case of sealed charges. |
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| ▲ | sgjohnson 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > If I were a senior Israeli or Hamas leader I’d avoid the place for a couple of decades in case of sealed charges. If the Netherlands granted diplomatic immunity to said leaders before their visit, and then decided to arrest them, that by itself would be an act of war. And even worse, it would ruin basically the only treaty every country has agreed to - the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. |
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| ▲ | sudosysgen 4 days ago | parent [-] | | In practice the Netherlands, by announcing openly they would be arrested before their arrival, had refused to grant them diplomatic immunity. So it is going to be extremely difficult to argue such an arrest would be against the Vienna convention. The Vienna convention explicitly states that the receiving state can declare before arrival that a diplomat will not be granted immunity. | | |
| ▲ | sgjohnson 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Well, obviously. In which case Netanyahu is simply not going to go there. |
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| ▲ | EdSchouten 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > The Dutch have a very lackadaisical attitude to law What do you mean by this specifically? |
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| ▲ | com 4 days ago | parent [-] | | There are many laws on the books that are ignored or in practice re-interpreted in the ground so that enforcement is only attempted in the most egregious situations. Case in point: the “gedoogbeleid” for soft drugs. Contrary to many people’s belief, possession, sale etc of these are not legalised in the way that we see in many other jurisdictions. Yet, teenagers sit on the side of the canal near my old home getting happily stoned with their friends and say “hi” to passing police and “handhaving” city rule enforcement officers. They buy from the “coffeeshop” whose coffee making is more theoretical than practical, even though sales of the weed they buy are against the law. Sometimes inspectors will visit the shop to ensure that no tobacco is being smoked, but not being concerned about weed, with the threat of large fines or even loss of license to sell soft drugs (illegal, remember?) being withdrawn. It’s all quite curious. |
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