Dutch MPs have voted to withdraw an invitation to the UN’s special rapporteur on the Occupied Territories to address parliament, after right-wing parties organised a new vote.

Francesca Albanese had been asked to meet members of the foreign affairs committee on Thursday, following a vote in favour of inviting her. Since then, however, pro-Israel organisations and MPs have mounted a campaign calling for her to be “disinvited”.

The pro-Israel campaign organisation Cidi, for example, described the planned visit to parliament as “worrying”, because it offered her “the opportunity to further spread her anti-Israel narrative”. It also called for demonstrations.

Foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp also said he would not “receive her”.

“Politics can be so ugly,” SP leader Jimmy Dijk said after the vote. “This room is full of adults who have been rounded up to stop this. If only they had put all this energy into coming up with critical questions.”

PvdA parliamentarian Kati Piri, who was behind the decision to invite Albanese, said the move was an attempt to silence people who support Palestinian rights. “In a healthy democracy, you debate with people you don’t agree with,” she said.

Albanese, who is in the Netherlands to give two lectures, told broadcaster NOS ahead of her first speech that the row shows how strong the pro-Israel lobby is in the Netherlands.

“I will be heard by the people of the Netherlands, and I will still talk to MPs who are sorry they cannot offer me an official location,” she said.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, has been the UN’s special representative for Gaza and the Occupied Territories since 2022. In a report on to the UN in 2024, she described the situation in Gaza as genocide and described Israel’s claim to self defence as a “false narrative”.

Special rapporteurs are independent experts named by the UN human rights council to monitor specific human rights situations.