Clea Skopeliti
The Guardian / August 23, 2025
Caspar Veldkamp resigns after cabinet reaches deadlock on adopting harsher measures over situation in Gaza.
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 Jewish 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 was 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.
Clea Skopeliti is a freelance reporter covering social and environmental issues
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Dutch foreign minister resigns after failing to secure sanctions against Israel
Molly Quell
The Independent / August 22, 2025
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp has resigned after he failed to secure new sanctions against Israel over the war in Gaza.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned Friday evening, after he failed to secure new sanctions against Israel over the war in Gaza.
Veldkamp had informed the country’s Parliament he intended to bring in new measures in response to Israel’s planned offensive in Gaza City and other heavily populated areas but was unable to secure the support of his coalition partners.
The 61-year-old former ambassador to Israel told reporters he felt he was unable “to implement policy myself and chart the course I deem necessary.”
Following Veldkamp’s resignation, the remaining Cabinet members of his center-right New Social Contract party also quit, leaving the Dutch government in disarray.
“In short we are done with it,” party leader Eddy van Hijum said, calling the Israeli government’s actions “diametrically opposed to international treaties.”
The Dutch government already collapsed in June when anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders pulled out of the country’s four-party coalition over a fight about immigration.
The three remaining parties stayed on in a caretaker government until elections could be held in October.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof was set to address parliament later Friday evening over the crisis.
The world’s leading authority on food crises said earlier on Friday the Gaza Strip’s largest city is gripped by famine, and that it’s likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.
The Netherlands’ parliament had repeatedly delayed a debate on sanctions against Israel, a discussion that was already postponed from Thursday, as the Friday afternoon Cabinet meeting dragged on.
“There’s a famine, ethnic cleansing, and genocide going on,” Kati Piri of the merged Green Left/Labor parties told parliament, “And our cabinet has been deliberating for hours about whether to take any action at all. Shameful.”
Veldkamp had proposed a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories in response to the planned military escalation.
Opposition politicians had called for a no-confidence vote for the minister, frustrated at what they saw as a lack of action against Israel.
Molly Quell is a Dutch-American journalist based in The Hague
