THE NETHERLANDS
When Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl arrived at Amsterdam's Olympic Stadium last week to attend the Holland-Belgium soccer match, a chorus of boos and catcalls rose from the capacity crowd of 65,000. A week earlier he probably would have been cheered.
The difference a week made lay in what was happening to The Netherlands as the only European nation under a total Arab oil embargo. The gay spirit of solidarity in the face of adversity that first swept the nation was giving way to misgivings. Already the weekend business of hotels and restaurants has dropped by 60%, and many restaurants say they will close on Sundays and lay off personnel.
Prime Minister Den Uyl was coming under increasing public pressure for the bravely outspoken ways of his Socialist-dominated coalition government. In Eindhoven, a headwaiter summed up the new mood this way: "We are all pro-Israel, and there's no reason to hide our feelings. We are certainly not getting more pro-Arab now, but that's no reason for the government of a small and vulnerable country to go out flag waving in the world, praising countries we like and lambasting the others."
In an editorial, the country's biggest newspaper, Amsterdam's De Telegraaf (circ. 670,000), blamed Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel for triggering the boycott when he called in Arab ambassadors at the start of the Arab-Israeli war to give them what they regarded as a dressing down. Though the Dutch were bound to suffer from their consistently pro-Israeli foreign policy over the years, many Dutchmen believed Van der Stoel's outspokenness — and Den Uyl's approval of Van der Stoel's views — goaded the Arabs to make an exam ple of Holland.
There are only 25,000 to 30,000 Jews left in The Netherlands, but the memories of the harsh Nazi occupation that saw 100,000 Dutch Jews herded off to their deaths in World War II has left a deep imprint. As one official of the For eign Ministry put it, "We're carrying our hearts on our tongues a little more than the other countries."
That defiant loyalty to Israel is the main reason why Dutch efforts at diplomatic backtracking with the Arabs so far have produced no results. First, the Dutch Ambassador to Iran was sent to Arab capitals to ask for "understanding." When that failed, a special emissary was dispatched with a personal message from Queen Juliana to King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, recalling the special relationship between her mother Queen Wilhelmina and King Saud. His answer has not been made public but in formed sources say the Dutch got nowhere.
Good Training. Meanwhile, the Dutch are faced with the pusillanimous refusal of help from their European part ners, who have not displayed Holland's gutsy outspokenness to the Arabs. The Dutch stepped up pressure on their neighbors to get either Europe-wide political support against the Arabs or some kind of oil-sharing agreement to prevent a collapse of the Dutch economy. At first the Dutch had merely hinted they might cut off supplies of natural gas, 41% of which they export mainly to West Germany, Belgium and France. Last week, at a meeting of the European Economic Community Foreign Ministers in Copenhagen, the threat was made explicit — no oil, no gas.