Tens of thousands protest in The Hague to demand Dutch government action on Gaza war
THE HAGUE — Tens of thousands of red-clad protesters marched through The Hague on Sunday to demand government action to seek a halt to Israel's campaign in Gaza.
Organizers called it the country's biggest demonstration in two decades, with human rights groups and aid agencies — including Amnesty International, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders — estimating the peaceful crowd at more than 100,000 people.
The streets of the Dutch political capital were packed with the old, young and even some babies on their first protest.
'We hope this is a wake-up call for the government,' said teacher Roos Lingbeek, attending the march with her husband and their 12-week-old daughter, Dido, who slept in a carrier as her parents brandished a sign simply reading: 'STOP.'
The march went past the Peace Palace, headquarters of the United Nations' International Court of Justice, where last year judges ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
Protesters walked a 5-kilometer loop around the city center of The Hague, to symbolically create the red line they say the government has failed to set.
'We are calling on the Dutch government: stop political, economic and military support to Israel as long as it blocks access to aid supplies and while it is guilty of genocide, war crimes and structural human rights violations in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,' Marjon Rozema of Amnesty International said.
Dutch policy toward Israel is just one of many issues causing splits in the Netherlands' fragile coalition government. Hard-right leader Geert Wilders is staunchly pro-Israel and his anti-immigrant Party for Freedom holds the largest number of seats in the country's parliament.
In a post on X, Wilders accused the protesters of supporting Hamas, calling them "confused."
Last week, however, foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp of the minority center-right VVD party urged the European Union to review a trade agreement with Israel, arguing that its blockade of humanitarian aid violated international law. Wilders hit back, denouncing the call as an 'affront to cabinet policy.' — Euronews
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asharq Al-Awsat
4 days ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Gaza Doctors Give their Own Blood to Patients after Scores Gunned Down Seeking Aid
Doctors in the Gaza Strip are donating their own blood to save their patients after scores of Palestinians were gunned down while trying to get food aid, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday. Around 100 MSF staff protested outside the UN headquarters in Geneva against an aid distribution system in Gaza run by an Israeli-backed private company, which has led to chaotic scenes of mass carnage, Reuters reported. "People need the basics of also need it in dignity," MSF Switzerland's director general, Stephen Cornish, told Reuters at the protest. "If you're fearing for your life, running with packages being mowed down, this is just something that is completely beyond everything we've ever seen," he said. "These attacks have killed were left to bleed out on the ground." Cornish said staff at one of the hospitals where MSF operates had to give blood as most Palestinians are now too poorly nourished to donate. Israel allowed the private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to begin food distribution in Gaza last week, after having completely shut the Gaza Strip to all supplies since the beginning of March. Gaza authorities say at least 102 Palestinians were killed and nearly 500 wounded trying to get aid from the food distribution sites in the first eight days. Eyewitnesses have said Israeli forces fired on crowds. The Israeli military said Hamas militants were to blame for opening fire, though it acknowledged that on Tuesday, when at least 27 people died, that its troops had fired at "suspects" who approached their positions. The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Wednesday supported by all other Council members, which would have called for an "immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza and unhindered access for aid.
Saudi Gazette
6 days ago
- Saudi Gazette
Dutch government collapses as Wilders' far-right party leaves coalition
THE HAGUE — The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is leaving the Netherlands' government over its policy for asylum-seekers, its leader Geert Wilders said on Tuesday, toppling the governing coalition. 'I signed up for the strictest asylum policy, not for the downfall of the Netherlands,' Wilders told reporters Tuesday morning. 'And our responsibility for this cabinet therefore ends here.' Wilders' decision to withdraw support for the most right-leaning government in Dutch history has plunged the country's politics into chaos. It leaves the government, led by Prime Minister Dick Schoof, with just 51 out of 150 seats in parliament. Opposition leaders have called for immediate elections. Schoof, who has clashed with Wilders over policy, has not yet commented. Polls suggest that, were elections to be held today, the PVV would lose seats but remain the largest party, just ahead of the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. But that's no guarantee that it would be able to enter a new government. Dutch politics features a constellation of parties, none of which has ever been able to command a majority of Dutch votes. Polls suggest that both center-right and center-left parties would gain from new PVV was the clear winner of a November 2023 election. But a coalition accord struck after months of haggling dictated that, while his party would join the government, he would remain on the sidelines, in has a long history of anti-Islam and anti-immigrant rhetoric, He was convicted of discrimination after insulting Moroccan immigrants at a 2014 campaign rally, and his party calls for 'no Islamic schools, Qu'ran, and mosques.'Wilders last week held a rare, formal press conference to present the government with an ultimatum for hardening the country's asylum policy – despite the fact that the minister for asylum and migration is a member of his own party.'The PVV promised voters the strictest asylum policy ever, aiming to make it the strictest in all of Europe,' Wilders said Tuesday. 'We proposed a plan to close the borders to asylum seekers, to stop them, to send them away. To stop building asylum-seeker centers, to close them.'But the coalition, he said, refused his proposals.'I could do nothing other than say that we are now withdrawing our support for this cabinet.' — CNN
Al Arabiya
02-06-2025
- Al Arabiya
Doctors without Borders blames US-backed aid agency for deadly Gaza chaos
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organization reported being 'shot from all sides' by Israeli forces. The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's aid distribution system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses told AFP the Israeli military had opened fire. The GHF and Israeli authorities denied any such incident took place but MSF and other medics reported treating crowds of locals with gunshot wounds at the Nasser hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis. 'Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,' MSF said in a statement. MSF emergency coordinator Claire Manera in the statement called the GHF's system of aid delivery 'dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective.' 'It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.' MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with 'visible gunshot wounds in their limbs.' MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid. 'They told us to take food -- then they fired from every direction,' he said. 'This isn't aid. It's a lie.' The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops 'did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.' A GHF spokesperson said: 'These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas,' the Islamic militant group that Israel has vowed to destroy in Gaza.
