Above photo: Havana/Getty Images.
The Netherlands joined 20 other countries in condemning Israel’s plan to build new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned on 22 August after he failed to secure harsher sanctions against Israel during a cabinet meeting with fellow ministers.
“I see that I am insufficiently able to take meaningful additional measures to increase pressure on Israel,” Veldkamp said after a cabinet meeting of the caretaker government in which the Gaza genocide was debated.
Veldcamp is a member of the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) party, which rules the Netherlands as part of a coalition with the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
Veldcamp said the steps he had proposed were “seriously discussed.” However, he failed to win the support of NSC’s coalition partners.
Veldcamp’s NSC said the VVD and BBB “refuse to acknowledge the alarming situation [in Gaza] and take necessary action.”
“I feel constrained in setting the course I consider necessary as foreign minister,” he said.
In a statement announcing his resignation, Veldkamp said, “We are living in a time of unprecedented geopolitical tension, where diplomacy matters more than ever.”
Veldkamp resigned just one day after the Netherlands joined 20 other countries in signing a joint declaration condemning Israeli plans to expand illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
On 14 August, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the construction of 3,400 homes in the E1 settlement bloc. If completed, the new construction would connect E1 with the Ma’ale Adummim settlement, effectively cutting the West Bank in half and blocking the future establishment of a Palestinian state with a contiguous territory.
Smotrich later said the construction plan was a “significant step that practically erases the two-state delusion and consolidates the Jewish people’s hold on the heart of the Land of Israel.”
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds. Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea,” he added.
In July, the Netherlands barred Smotrich and fellow National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from entering the country due to their extremist policies. Ben-Gvir has made statements many view as genocidal, including calling for all humanitarian aid to be blocked from reaching Gaza amid a famine, and calling for Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed from the devastated enclave under the euphemism of “voluntary migration.”
The Netherlands has seen protests in recent months to pressure the government to take action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
More than 100,000 people demonstrated against Israel in The Hague in June, the largest protest in the Netherlands in two decades.
