“I don’t want to look away”, a woman argues her presence on Beursplein. A small mobile stage, many flags and a total of several hundred people have gathered to make their voices heard against the Israel policy that the Dutch government is pursuing.
During a bright second parliamentary debate last Thursday it became clear that the parties have very different opinions about the position of Israel and Palestine. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he wants to take the whole of Gaza, and there is harsh criticism about the help from the Netherlands and Europe: “We will not get there in this way.”
“The Netherlands does not do enough, and in this way I hope it will reach them,” says one of the demonstrators. “But I don’t really think it works.” Many of the activists also see that the protest is considerably smaller than, for example, the Rode Line Protest in The Hague in mid-June. Hundreds of thousands of people came to that.
Momentum
“The impact of that is of course great, so I sometimes wonder why it should be so fragmented now,” admits a man on the square. “But yes, the small demonstrations do help. It is really creating consciousness.”
And so more people think about it: “In this way you also let people who are not in The Hague know that the message is still there. And it sometimes feels desolate, but sitting on the couch doesn’t help,” says a woman. One of her supporters: “Small demonstrations are building up to a momentum. And I think we are still in that momentum to keep on putting pressure. The drop hoods the stone by keeping dripping.”