Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Samaria Regional Council
Dutch Party for Freedom head Geert Wilders (right) visits Samaria with Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan, Dec. 9, 2024
(JNS) — Seven of the Dutch Party for Freedom’s (PVV) 26 lawmakers have left the party, citing perceived failures on the part of party leader Geert Wilders.
Wilders, one of Europe’s leading right-wing politicians and a passionate supporter of Israel, called it a “black day.”
The Netherlands is in the midst of a political crisis triggered by Prime Minister Dick Schoof’s resignation after PVV withdrew from the majority coalition.
On Jan. 23, JNS interviewed the leader of the splinter group, the Tel Aviv-born lawmaker Gidi Markuszower. He said that Wilders had squandered votes due to ideological rigidity, and that the party may cease to exist soon because of the same inflexible attitude.
“We did not deliver on all our main pledges, including on Israel,” Markuszower told JNS in his first interview with an international publication following the split.
The splintering, which may reshape the balance of power in the Netherlands and within Europe’s conservative movement, underlines the challenges facing Europe’s ascendant rightist bloc. As their influence grows, rightist leaders are often torn between their commitment to change and the need to negotiate entrenched political realities.
Wilders’s alleged failure to deliver on Israel refers to the Dutch government’s unprecedented sanctions on the Jewish state, imposed just months after the PVV entered the ruling coalition for the first time in the party’s 22-year history.
Under Schoof, Holland imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel over its war against Hamas in Gaza, and has taken a leading role in trying to suspend E.U.-Israel trade agreements.
Schoof’s foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp, accused Israel of war crimes and said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he landed in the Netherlands as per an International Criminal Court warrant. Meanwhile, Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever was among the European officials who vowed to ignore the disputed warrant.
PVV toppled the coalition in June amid disputes with more left-leaning coalition partners over immigration. PVV had been the coalition’s largest partner thanks to a record 37 seats in parliament’s lower house following the 2023 elections. But PVV lost 11 seats in last year’s election, making it, even before the splintering, an unlikely partner in ongoing coalition talks.
After Oct. 7, 2023, the Dutch government’s hostile attitude toward Israel clashed profoundly and visibly with the stridently pro-Israel attitude of the PVV and Wilders.
In May, while PVV was in government, Wilders took to social media to air the dirty linen. “Were those ridiculous anti-Israel measures by Minister Veldkamp actually taken by the entire cabinet?” Wilders asked Schoof in a tweet. “Were all ministers from all parties informed about this in advance and did they agree to it? Is this based on any actual decision by the Council of Ministers?”
Wilders, who lived in Israel for two years as a volunteer in his youth and whose wife is said to be Jewish, also defended Israel from the podium of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament.
“Do we support the Jewish People, fighting for their existence, or do we support the extremist, Islamist rabble trying to annihilate them?” He demanded in a speech in May 2024. “I tell you, to my final breath: I support the State of Israel.”
Despite leading the de facto ruling party, Wilders had no executive role in the Cabinet as per the conditions set by the other partners. They cited his polarizing persona.
Last year, Wilders met with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he has vocally supported in the media, on the margins of the NATO summit in the Hague. Trump called Wilders a “very nice guy” after the audience.
To Markuszower, whom Wilders last week described as “a friend as well as a colleague,” the clash on Israel was symptomatic of a broader issue that ultimately led him to mutiny after many years in the loyal service of the PVV.
