By Anthony Deutsch and Charlotte Van Campenhout
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch police on Sunday detained more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters who defied a ban on demonstrations in Amsterdam following clashes this week involving Israeli soccer fans.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital’s Dam Square chanting “Free Palestine” and “Amsterdam says no to genocide,” in reference to the Gaza war.
Israel denies accusations of genocide in its more than year-long offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
After a local court upheld the city hall ban, police intervened, ordering protesters to leave and arresting 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 spokeswoman Ramona van den Ochtend said, without confirming how many had been picked up.
One protester was carried to an ambulance bleeding.
The ban, which authorities extended for another four days until Thursday, has been in effect since Friday following attacks on Israeli soccer fans following a soccer match between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam.
At least five people were injured in attacks that Dutch authorities and foreign leaders, including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, denounced as anti-Semitic.
ARRESTS
Protest organizers said in a message on Instagram that they were outraged by the party’s “framing” of the unrest as anti-Semitic and called the ban on the protest draconian.
“We refuse to allow the charge of anti-Semitism to be used as a weapon 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 disorderly conduct and 10 for crimes such as vandalism.
In addition to being attacked by what the mayor called “anti-Semitic hit-and-run squads,” visiting Israeli fans burned a Palestinian flag and used sticks, pipes and stones in confrontations with opponents, according to video and a police report.
Local police chief Olivier Dutilh told the court on Sunday that the ban on protests was still necessary as anti-Semitic incidents continued, including people being pushed out of taxis and forced to show their passports on Saturday night. .
The Netherlands has seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the Gaza war began in October last year.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and millions displaced in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, according to health officials there, launched after Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages in a cross-border attack, according to Israel.