By Anthony Deutsch and Charlotte Van Campenhout
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch police took away more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters who defied a ban on demonstrations in Amsterdam on Sunday following clashes involving Israeli soccer fans last week.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the capital’s Dam Square, chanting “Free Palestine” and “Amsterdam says no to genocide”, in reference to the Gaza war.
Israel denies allegations of genocide in its more than year-long offensive against Palestinian militant group Hamas.
After a local court ratified the city council’s ban, police moved in, instructing protesters to leave and rounding up more than 100 of them, according to a Reuters journalist.
They were put on buses and dropped off on the outskirts of the city, police spokesperson Ramona van den Ochtend said, without confirming how many had been picked up.
One protester was taken to an ambulance bleeding.
The ban, which authorities extended for another four days until Thursday, has been in place since Friday after attacks on Israeli soccer supporters following a soccer match between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam.
At least five people were injured in assaults that Dutch authorities and foreign leaders including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced as antisemitic.
On Sunday, Israel urged its citizens to avoid attending cultural and sports events abroad involving Israelis over the coming week. A statement issued by Netanyahu’s office said Israel had intelligence that pro-Palestinian groups abroad intended to harm Israelis in cities in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (TADAWUL:), France, Belgium and others.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s office meanwhile announced that he would join fans at the Stade de France when France plays Israel in a soccer match on Thursday.
Macron’s gesture is aimed at sending “a message of fraternity and solidarity after the intolerable acts of antisemitism that followed the match in Amsterdam”, his office said.
DETENTIONS
In the Netherlands, protest organisers said in a message on Instagram that they were outraged by the “framing” of unrest around the match as antisemitic and called the protest ban draconian.
“We refuse to let the charge of antisemitism be weaponized to suppress Palestinian resistance,” they said.
Four people remain detained on suspicion of violent acts, including two minors. Another 40 people have been fined for public disturbance and 10 for offences including vandalism.
As well as suffering attacks by what the mayor called “antisemitic hit-and-run squads”, visiting Israeli fans burned a Palestinian flag and used sticks, pipes and rocks in clashes with opponents, according to a video and police report.
Local police chief Olivier Dutilh told the court on Sunday that the protest ban was still needed as antisemitic incidents were continuing, including people being pushed out of taxis and told to show their passports on Saturday night.
The Netherlands has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents since the Gaza war began in October last year.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, according to health officials there, and much of the enclave has been destroyed. Israel launched its campaign after Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostage in a cross-border attack, according to Israel.
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