Caspar VeldkampThe Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, has resigned after the caretaker government failed to agree on tougher sanctions against Israel, deepening the political instability in The Hague.
Veldkamp, a former ambassador to Israel, announced his departure on Friday evening following a tense cabinet meeting which ended in deadlock. His party, the centrist New Social Contract (NSC), also withdrew from government discussions in protest.
“The coalition partners refuse to acknowledge the alarming situation in Gaza and take necessary action,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
The split emerged after the Netherlands joined 20 other countries on Thursday in signing a joint declaration condemning Israel’s plans to build 3,400 new homes in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Critics say the construction would effectively divide the territory in two.
The Netherlands had already barred two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, from entering the country in July. But efforts to introduce wider sanctions faltered, prompting Veldkamp to say he was “insufficiently able to take meaningful additional measures”.
“We are living in a time of unprecedented geopolitical tension, where diplomacy matters more than ever,” he told the Dutch news agency ANP.
Public pressure has been mounting on the government, with between 100,000 and 150,000 people joining a march in The Hague in June to demand tougher action over Israel’s war in Gaza. The demonstration was the largest in the Netherlands in two decades.
Veldkamp exit
Veldkamp’s resignation came the same day UN-backed experts warned that Gaza City and surrounding areas were in the grip of an “entirely man-made” famine. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has only declared four famines since its creation in 2004, most recently in Sudan last year.
