Most NL residents worry Israel-Hamas violence will make Netherlands less safe

A majority of Netherlands residents are worried that the violence between Israel and Hamas will increase tensions and decrease public safety in Dutch society, EenVandaag reported after surveying almost 30,000 people on its Opinion Panel. The attacks are a disaster for world stability, and Dutch society will also feel the consequences, the majority of Netherlands residents believe.

Seventy percent worry that the violence will negatively affect the atmosphere in society, especially after all the other recent crises like the pandemic, nitrogen, and the war in Ukraine. This is yet another highly flammable issue to drive people apart, the respondents said. Strikingly, voters from the left to right of the political spectrum worry about this.

Many (57 percent) also worry that the Israel-Hamas violence will have consequences for safety in the Netherlands. “I am afraid of protests and demonstrations that will provoke irritation and violence and that we as outsiders will be sucked into it,” one respondent said. A Jewish respondent said they are now “very wary of my own safety. Anti-semitic forces are also present in the Netherlands and can take out their frustrations on us.”

“Another topic that can polarize people very quickly,” one respondent said. “It doesn’t help that there are also elections coming up.” PVV leader Geert Wilders, for example, already used an attack on Swedish football fans in Brussels as an opportunity to call for voters.

The attack didn’t make Netherlands residents more afraid, EenVandaag said. The thousands of respondents who completed the survey on Tuesday or later are just as concerned about the consequences of the Israel-Hamas violence as panel members who were surveyed before the attack.

So far, the situation in the Gaza Strip and Israel hasn’t influenced people’s planned voter behavior much. Only 10 percent think that the issue will be decisive for their vote. “It's still a bit of a far-away issue,” one respondent said. “If things go wild here, that will probably change. But for now, thank God, it remains relatively quiet.”