It has been almost a year since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in the Gaza Strip. The Netherlands should maintain a more critical stance towards Israel, Dutch voters said in a survey conducted by Ipsos I&O on behalf of the newspaper de Volkskrant.Half of Dutch voters want a stricter stance toward Israel. This is not only the call of left-wing voters. Critical voices from the conservative camp, such as the NSC and the VVD, also want the government to take a more critical stance towards Israel.
Well they could hardly be less critical could they?
Schoof’s hard right government has only been in power since June, and though they’ve voiced explicit support for Israel they have called for a ceasefire and urged Bibi to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza. So in that way, yes, they could have chosen not to call for a ceasefire or humanitarian aid at all.
The context for that is a genocide case at the ICJ, which is at the same stage of ajudication as the case against Myanmar, for which all sorts of sanctions have been implemented…
I’m certainly not disputing that western governments have more leverage over some countries than others.