The foreign affairs ministry has recommended the cancellation of a trip to the Netherlands by 30 Israeli mayors because four are in charge of settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports on Monday.

The paper says the joint seminar for Dutch and Israeli mayors had been organised by the Israeli branch of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. But when the JDC gave the list of participants to the Dutch embassy in Israel, the embassy discovered that it included the mayors of four contested settlements.
The embassy alerted the foreign ministry which then warned the Dutch mayors the visit could be controversial. A request to remove the four mayors from the list of delegates was refused by Israel.
A spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry told the paper Israel is ‘deeply disappointed’ by the Dutch decision, which ‘politicised a visit that was meant to be technical and professional’.
According to Dutch news agency ANP ChristenUnie MP Joël Voordewind has called on foreign minister Maxime Verhagen to explain the reports and the role of the Dutch embassy.