Amsterdam protest: tens of thousands demand tougher Israel policy

A mass rally took place in Amsterdam, where participants called on the Dutch authorities to take more decisive action against Israel. According to the Dutch branch of Amnesty International, more than 200,000 people joined the protest. No official estimate of turnout was provided.

Several speakers at the rally have been accused of links to the terrorist organization Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups. They include, as Dutch News reports, Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the international BDS movement, which seeks to pressure Israel over its policies toward Palestinians, and Medhat Alamawi of the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands, who is linked to the activist group Utrecht4Palestine.

What the Dutch authorities have already done

In late September, the Dutch government banned the import of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. In response, Israel's Foreign Ministry stripped Dutch representatives in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is based, of their diplomatic status. At the same time, unlike a number of other European countries, the Netherlands has not officially recognized the State of Palestine.

Genocide allegations and the start of the war

Israel consistently rejects accusations of genocide in the Gaza Strip, yet they keep resurfacing. In October, the UN's independent international commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territories stated that the Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip despite the ceasefire reached in October last year. Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva rejected the report, calling it an attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

The war in the Gaza Strip began in October 2023, when militants from the terrorist movement Hamas and its allies killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on southern Israel and abducted another 251. Israel then launched a large-scale military operation.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz