The authorities in Amsterdam said on Tuesday that they expected to make more arrests in connection with what they have called antisemitic assaults on Israeli soccer fans in the city last week, as well as related confrontations and incendiary behavior by both sides.
In the city government’s first detailed report on the events, the police said that 62 people had already been arrested in connection with the violence, including 10 people who lived in Israel.
Most of the arrests were for minor offenses, the authorities said: Forty-five people were issued fines for disturbing the peace, unruly behavior or being unable to show identification when requested by police officers. Nearly a dozen more cases remain under investigation. Four Dutch suspects are still being held on more serious charges, including two teenagers who are accused of assault and violence against the riot police.
The authorities did not specify why the Israeli residents had been arrested.
Officials said that they were still investigating whether the attacks had been organized.
“What happened over the past few days is a toxic cocktail of antisemitism, hooligan behavior, and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, and other countries in the Middle East,” Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, wrote in the report. The findings were to be presented to the City Council on Tuesday.
The report offered only a few new details about the attacks and about the inflammatory behavior and vandalism by some Israeli fans surrounding a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam last Thursday.
It defended both the mayor’s decision to allow visiting fans to attend the match and the police response once violence broke out on Wednesday. Officials say that 1,200 police were deployed to keep the peace on Wednesday and Thursday, and that at least 500 officers were still on the streets after midnight those days.
Still, the report concedes that officers struggled to prevent attacks on Maccabi fans on Thursday night after the match, which were carried out by assailants who quickly fled on electric bikes, scooters and on foot. They also did not stop what the report describes as some Maccabi fans using sticks to commit acts of vandalism in the city center.
The report details how, after the events of Wednesday night, the city tried to appeal to both UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, and the Israeli government, to remind fans that the event was a sports match and should “not be mixed with politics.”
The report also described how tensions remained high in the city — and how threats persisted to its Jewish and Muslim communities. Officials said that a man was thrown out of a taxi at 3 a.m. over the weekend for being Jewish. A synagogue received a bomb threat, which turned out to be false.
There were calls online to attack mosques, officials said, and another attempt to burn a Palestinian flag. On Wednesday, before the match, a group of Maccabi fans stole and burned a Palestinian flag in central Amsterdam.
“Antisemitism can’t be answered with other racism: The safety of one group cannot be at the expense of the safety of another,” Mayor Halsema noted.
The report adds that city authorities took special precautions ahead of the game, though the match itself was not considered especially high risk. None of the intelligence or terrorism watchdog groups that the city consulted had raised the threat level, the report said.
The authorities highlighted that the match had coincided with the 86th anniversary of Nazi pogroms, which were officially commemorated in the city’s Portuguese Synagogue. It also noted that authorities permitted a pro-Palestinian demonstration close to the stadium that day.
Tensions started on Wednesday, both on social media and on Amsterdam’s streets. The report notes videos showing supporters engaging in “racist and hateful chants” against Arabs. The police arrested four people on suspicion of daubing pro-Palestinian graffiti at the soccer stadium, which is outside the city center, at around 11 p.m.
Later that evening, about 50 Maccabi supporters, some with their faces covered, gathered in a downtown area. They pulled down a Palestinian flag hanging from a building.
The group then split up. The police report said that a number of the Maccabi supporters took off their belts and used them to attack the exterior of a cab. The report does not say if anyone was in the vehicle.
Around the same time, the report said that a call had gone out on a chat group used by cabdrivers to gather at a casino where 400 Israeli supporters were present.
On the day of the match, the city appealed to taxi drivers and ride-share providers asking them “not to seek confrontation and not to be provoked.”
Officials reported there were more confrontations around 1 p.m. Thursday, the report said, when a large group of Israeli fans gathered on Dam Square, in the center of Amsterdam. Fireworks were launched — the report does not say by whom — but the police were mostly able to keep the groups apart.
Around midnight, after the match, the report said, clashes intensified. A group of Maccabi supporters gathered back on Dam Square, some armed with sticks; some of the fans committed acts of vandalism, the report added.
Around this time, small groups of men spread throughout city center and carried out assaults on individual Israeli supporters who were not part of the big group of fans. The police, the report said, struggled to stop them, because the assailants would “briefly attack Maccabi supporters and then disappear again.”
In the introduction to the report, the mayor wrote that “fear and disbelief” persisted in Amsterdam days after the events.
“Violence by one is never an excuse for violence by the other,” she wrote. “Our city has been struck in the heart by these events. Amsterdammers feel pain everywhere.”
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