The Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, has resigned after a cabinet meeting failed to secure sanctions against Israel, weakening the Netherlands’ already fragile caretaker government.
Veldkamp’s colleagues from the centrist New Social Contract (NSC) party also walked out after the cabinet debate late on Friday reached an impasse over adopting harsher measures against Israel.
The discussions about taking further steps against Israel came after the Netherlands joined 20 other countries in signing a joint declaration on Thursday condemning Israeli plans to build an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. Critics say the 3,400-home settlement would split the territory in half.
The Netherlands barred the far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country in July.
After Friday’s meeting, Veldkamp – a former ambassador to Israel – told the Dutch news agency ANP he was “insufficiently able to take meaningful additional measures”. In a statement announcing his resignation, he said “we are living in a time of unprecedented geopolitical tension, where diplomacy matters more than ever”.
Backing his stance, the NSC said its coalition partners, the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), “refuse to acknowledge the alarming situation [in Gaza] and take necessary action”.
There have been a number of protests in the Netherlands to pressure the government to take action against Israel’s war in Gaza, which is nearing its two-year mark. Between 100,000 and 150,000 people took part in a demonstration in The Hague in June, making it the largest protest in the Netherlands in two decades.
Veldkamp’s resignation came after UN-backed experts said on Friday that Gaza City and the surrounding area was in the grip of an “entirely man-made” famine, and that deaths could rise exponentially. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has only declared four famines since it was established in 2004, most recently in Sudan last year.
The NSC wwas part of a caretaker administration that has been running the Netherlands since June, when the coalition government collapsed after the far-right politician Geert Wilders withdrew his party’s ministers from the alliance.
The PVV’s withdrawal from the coalition in June triggered an early election, with a snap poll called for 29 October.
