Tens of thousands of people marched through the centre of The Hague on Sunday to protest against the right-wing cabinet’s position on Israel and the war in Gaza. The organisers called on the Dutch government to take concrete action to stop Israel’s continued violations of international humanitarian law.

Many of the demonstrators wore red clothing to symbolically draw a “red line”, which they say is something the government had previously refused to do.

The protest organisers estimated attendance at more than 100,000 people, calling it the largest demonstration in the Netherlands in the past 20 years. Police said the protest passed peacefully but declined to give an official crowd estimate.

RTL reporter Ruben Leter said the demonstrations came from a wide cross section of the population. “There were a lot of older people and families with children,” he said. “It was also a whiter crowd than at most pro-Palestine demonstrations.”

Actrice Carice van Houten was among the crowd. “If politicians won’t drawn a line, then we, as ordinary citizens, will have to do so,” she told RTL.

The march started at the Malieveld close to the parliamentary complex and ended at the Peace Palace, where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is based.

The court is currently hearing a genocide case against Israel and in a provisional ruling last year, the ICJ ordered Israel to take measures to protect civilians in Gaza and to allow humanitarian aid into the area. Israel has not complied with that ruling.

The protest was organised by a broad coalition of aid and human rights organisations and pro-Palestinian groups, including Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, Pax, Oxfam Novib, The Rights Forum and Plant een Olijfboom.

Last week, Dutch foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp accused Israel of breaching human rights laws with its plan to permanently occupy the Gaza region.

Veldkamp wrote in a letter to the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, that Israel’s blockade of Gaza breached the terms of its free trade agreement with the EU.

Support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza is falling in the Netherlands, with two-thirds of people now describing the most recent bombing as “out of all proportion” and 77% condemning the aid blockade, according to the latest RTL opinion poll.