Demonstrations remain, but attention to Gaza Ebt away in the Netherlands

The wind is howling through the passage under the ministry, but there is little to be heard on a Thursday afternoon at the beginning of May. The few hundred people who have gathered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and sit still. Former ambassadors wear a banner with the text ‘Against Genocide’ and look out stoically. Civil servants on sneakers and with Arafatjaal are staring around in the distance. A man in a suit, civil servant’s pass around the neck, looks at the ground. Nobody talks for twenty minutes.

For a year and a half, officials have been demonstrating every Thursday during their lunch break for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It started, says a civil servant, when shortly after the start of the war in October 2023, officials from The Hague felt « pain » and « discomfort » in the virtually unconditional support that the cabinet expressed for Israel. She wants, just like other officials with whom NRC Due to her work, she did not speak with her name in the newspaper. When those officials realized that more ministries were thought about, they met. The first time, at the end of December 2023, was « retreating. » « Many of us never thought he would do this. » It was also emotional. « Oh my God, » she says, « a genocide is committed. »

Jan van Diepen is there too. He has not been a civil servant, either, but is there almost every week, since the start. At that time he once took a sign with the text ‘Israel, Stop Staring Gaza’. The organization, he says, thought that was going too far. They first wanted to talk to the minister, maybe something would come out of it. « But that turned out to be a dead end. The tenor has turned. »

And there are, he and the organizing officials, more and more people come to the sit-in off. « Especially since the breaking of the ceasefire, it is busier, » says one of them.

Support for cabinet policy is declining

Does Dutch support for the Palestinians grow and the aversion to Israel indeed increases, more than a year and a half since the outbreak of this war on October 7, 2023, which cost tens of thousands of people? This weekend large demonstrations are expected in Amsterdam (Saturday) and The Hague (Sunday) – More than fifteen thousand people have already registered for the latter demonstration.

Recent research by research agency IPSOS I&O also showed that support for the cabinet policy on the war is falling. It was never big; Shortly after the Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli raid in Gaza, about a third of the Dutch were behind the government’s position, now that has fallen to 15 percent.

The research also shows that more and more Dutch people turn away from the war. Yes: ask them who is responsible for violence and many more people than a year and a half ago now mention Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – now just as often as the Palestinian terror movement Hamas. And a large majority think the Israeli violence is « disproportionate ». The dissatisfaction with the government’s position also translates to a tight majority in the desire that the government is more critical of Israel. Only: that group is the same size as shortly after the outbreak of the war. The number of Dutch people who say that they are worried The conflict has since declined: from eight in ten to barely six in ten – why exactly, is unclear. Half of them, Gaza says to be followed at all.

Relevant topics

The war, says opinion poller Peter Kanne, “is not something very bad top of mind is or has a lot of priority ”. If participants in his panel is presented with a list of topics that can play a role in their choice for a political party, then they cross fourteen topics than the war in Gaza. Seven percent call it as one of the three relevant topics – at a great distance from the top three immigration, values ​​and norms, and living.

But the people who are concerned with Gaza, says Kanne, « are becoming more and more desperate. » In his studies they increasingly start themselves about ‘genocide’. « The situation feels hopeless for them. »

Tuesday morning is a young woman in the courtyard of the Utrecht University Library. She wears a colorful T-shirt with the text ‘God is a dyke’ (‘God is lesbian’) and a joint dies between her fingers. She doesn’t want to say her name.

It is then the seventh day of an ‘encampment’: students and other Pro-Palestinian activists have built a tent camp on the university site, because they demand that the university breaks all ties with Israeli universities. She does not study at the university herself. But the fact that she is here almost every day and also sleeps, still under the starry sky tonight, is also through something else in addition to her support for the Palestinian case: « I feel here. »

She had never been very concerned about Palestine. In the village where she comes from, nobody ever talked about it. Her worries were mainly with Zwarte Piet and climate change.

Until she stood in « super hard » after 7 October 2023. It was a « steam course » about « genocide on the Palestinians. » She started, she says, not after October 7, but with the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 that culminated in the foundation of the state of Israel. It was like in the movie The Matrixshe agrees: anyone who has taken the red pill suddenly sees how the world really works and can’t see that anymore.

It feels « alienating » and « alienating » how she is working on the violence in Gaza, how she sees all videos of bombing and dead children, and how the rest of the Netherlands, public and politics, is less concerned with it. Why, she wonders, « don’t see the rest what I see? »

The civil servant who demonstrates every week for the ministry recognizes that feeling, although it might take a while before she got it herself. Shortly after the start of the war, she was still « naive, » she says. She thought: when the cabinet sees what I see, they will stop Israel. “They only look at it NOS Journalthey don’t see the images I see on Instagram.  » So she started sending those images to senior officials and members of the cabinet, with the expectation that « if they see that the international conventions we have agreed are violated, they will say to Israel: this is not what we meant with the right to self -defense. We all stand for the Constitution and for human rights, I thought: that is: that is:” ”” ”

‘Red line has not been achieved’

That was also the moment when she realized that her image of the Netherlands as « the advocate of human rights, guardian of the international legal order, is not shared by the cabinet ».

So many reports have been published about the situation in Gaza, she says, so many images, there was even the interlocutory judgment in which the International Court of Justice warned of genocide. « But a red line has not been achieved. That nothing is being done, feels desperate. » The fact that the cabinet announced a week and a half ago that it wants to investigate compliance with Israel from the association agreement with the European Union is, according to her, « too late. » « And in the meantime is the delivery of parts for combat aircraft going on? »

She talks a lot about that with colleagues. At the beginning she did get pat on the back, but she said, she thought, many civil servants also go too far to demonstrate their own political bosses. « Now the group is growing. Especially lately I have seen many colleagues I did not expect: it really can’t do it anymore. And go to the demonstration. »

In Utrecht, the activists do not have to convince each other of what is happening in Gaza, says the activist. She praises the ‘community’ that is built on the university grounds, they cook ‘fucking delicious’ for each other, keep things clean, organize lectures. « Society is so individualized, I often miss the feeling of community. Here it is. That feeling of being together works my despair against. »

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