Emergency debate in Amsterdam about Gaza-support protests, police response atuniversity

On Friday, the Amsterdam city council will discuss the pro-Palestinian protests in the capital this week and the actions of the police. Mayor Femke Halsema will attend the meeting of the General Affairs Committee, which was scheduled at the request of all parties. The emergency debate starts at 1:00 p.m. It is unusual for the Amsterdam council to meet on a Friday.

The demonstrations started on Monday afternoon when a group of protesters set up tents on the Roterseiland campus of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). With their protest, the demonstrators wanted to force the university to cut all ties with Israeli organizations.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrators occupied the Binnengasthuis grounds, another UvA location. Protesters spent the night from Tuesday to Wednesday behind barricades they had erected. Police cracked down on the protest on Wednesday after demonstrators ignored calls to leave. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested. According to the police, five cops were hurt during the evacuation. One of them got ammonia in his eye.

Some demonstrators met with the UvA board on Wednesday, but the discussion did not result in concrete agreements. There was another protest on Thursday. A few thousand people gathered on the Roeterseiland campus at the beginning of the evening. They later marched through the city, ending on Spuistraat. There, the riot police carried out several charges and arrested three people.

The riot police also intervened in the other protests earlier this week and there are at least two videos showing riot police officers striking demonstrators, including with batons. There were also other violent incidents during the protests, including a group of men suddenly attacking demonstrators and throwing them with fireworks on Monday.

A Jewish man who went to get a look at the protest on Roterseiland filmed that altercation. He told the Telegraaf that demonstrators supporting Gaza attacked him with a wooden plank.

“When I got to the tent camp, I saw torches and smoke and there was pushing and pulling. I didn’t feel safe there so I went outside, because imagine you are discovered as a Jew,” he told the newspaper. Outside he saw the pro-Israel men attacking the occupiers. A man with his face covered by a Palestinian scarf rushed forward from the tent camp and lashed out with a stick, he said. “Then it was immediately my turn, although I was only on the sidelines filming. A boy wearing a red shirt and a scarf hit my head with a wooden plank.”

“The Netherlands is my country, I feel at home and want to feel safe here. But since October 7, it has been dangerous to show your identity here,” the Jewish man said to the newspaper.

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema does not believe that the police acted too harshly. “Force was used after numerous warnings to leave,” she told NPO Radio 1 program Dit is de Dag.

Halsema supports the police’s actions. “On Wednesday it involved people who broke into the building and caused horrific destruction. That is no longer a demonstration and then the police can take action.”

According to Halsema, a dangerous situation arose for local residents and the staff of the UvA. “Catering staff and employees were forcibly told to leave immediately. Criminal offenses were committed,” said the mayor.

Halsema said that the police’s use of force is always a “very well-considered” decision, not one you make in a minute. “That is being thoroughly prepared, and this requires assistance from officers from all over the country. You can never be completely sure whether there has been an individual case where it was just out of proportion; I cannot oversee that,” she said.

Rector Magnificus of the UvA Peter-Paul Verbeek got a “sad feeling” from seeing the violence during the demonstrations. “Protests are part of the university, but they should be non-violent. Protesters should not impose their will on others in an aggressive manner,” Verbeek said on Thursday evening in an interview with the NPO current affairs program Nieuwsuur.

Verbeek finds it “completely unacceptable that a protest that starts peacefully escalates so much.” He did not want to speculate whether the aggressive demonstrators were actually UvA students. Most kept their faces covered.