At the same time, hundreds of new members have also registered last weekend, according to GroenLinks (left Green party) and PvdA.
Last week, the GroenLinks-PvdA parliamentary group proposed in the House to impose a temporary full arms embargo. This would also stop the delivery of components for Israel's air defense, the so-called 'Iron Dome'.
Because Israel is currently being attacked with rockets and drones, including from Iran, the proposal caused unrest, both inside and outside the party. Incidentally, the proposal did not receive a majority in the House of Representatives. Tensions on the subject rose around the joint congress of the PvdA and GroenLinks on Saturday. A large majority of the members voted in favour of the arms embargo at the congress; a motion by a number of PvdA members, including Verbeet, to reject the plan was voted down.
Verbeet is unhappy with how that went. In her letter of resignation to PvdA chairwoman Esther-Mirjam Sent, she writes that she "no longer feels at home" in the party because of the "indecent course of events".
According to Verbeet, the embargo proposal deliberately and knowingly deeply hurt and frightened "Jewish and non-Jewish party members". According to her, no action was taken at the congress when "boos" were shouted at those who were against an arms embargo. "I am deeply hurt and astonished that none of you intervened. Or was that perhaps the intention?"
Roopram and Jacobi resigned their membership for similar reasons. "The Labour Party is dead," writes Roopram, who was an alderman in Barendrecht. "There was booing, former Speaker of the House Gerdi Verbeet was thrown out," Jacobi told De Telegraaf yesterday. "I have decided for myself: I really don't want to be part of this anymore."
Incidentally, the three prominent resigners are all against the impending merger of GroenLinks and PvdA.
Other prominent figures who opposed the Israel course, such as former party leader Ad Melkert and former chairman Hans Spekman, are still members of the party.
(Source: NOS.nl)
