Reuters and AFP, AMSTERDAM and THE HAGUE
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Friday saved his governing coalition despite threats of an exodus by Cabinet members over the government’s response to violence against Israeli soccer fans last week.
Dutch State Secretary for Benefits and Customs Nora Achahbar unexpectedly quit the Cabinet on Friday to protest claims by some politicians that Dutch of Moroccan descent attacked Israeli fans in Amsterdam on Thursday last week, the day of the match between Dutch side Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Her resignation triggered a crisis Cabinet meeting at which four ministers from her centrist New Social Contract party also threatened to quit. If they had, the coalition would have lost its majority in parliament.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof talks during a news conference in The Hague on Friday.
Photo: AFP
“We have reached the conclusion that we want to remain, as a Cabinet for all people in the Netherlands,” Schoof told a news conference late on Friday in The Hague.
Addressing “the incidents in Amsterdam last week,” he said that “there is a lot of upheaval in the country. It was an emotional week, a heavy week and a lot has been said and a lot happened.”
“There has never been any racism in my government or in the coalition parties,” he added.
The Netherlands is grappling with the political fallout of what Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called a “poisonous cocktail of anti-Semitism and hooliganism.”
The city’s police department has said Maccabi fans were chased and beaten by gangs on scooters, while Israeli fans attacked a taxi and burned a Palestinian flag.
On Monday, during a Cabinet meeting to discuss the violence, “things reportedly got heated, and in Achahbar’s opinion racist statements were made,” the NOS public broadcaster reported.
Achahbar, a former judge and public prosecutor who was born in Morocco, felt comments by several political figures were hurtful and possibly racist, De Volkskrant daily reported.
“Polarization in the recent weeks has had such an effect on me that I no longer can, nor wish to fulfil my position in this Cabinet,” Achahbar said in a statement.
The coalition is led by the anti-Muslim populist party Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, which finished top in a general election a year ago. The government was installed in July after months of tense negotiations.
Wilders, who is not a Cabinet member, has repeatedly said that Dutch of Moroccan descent were the main attackers of the Israeli fans, although police have not specified the backgrounds of suspects.
Schoof on Monday said the incidents showed that some young people in the Netherlands with immigrant backgrounds did not share “Dutch core values.”
