A Belgian Jewish group accused Brussels on Thursday of applying antisemitic policies after its Jerusalem consulate refused to renew the passport of a Jewish woman living in Judea.
The refusal earlier this week is “an illegal form of discrimination by Belgium against its own citizens,” Ralph Pais, vice president of Belgium’s Jewish Information and Documentation Center (JID), told JNS. While the consulate services Arabs from Judea and Samaria, Jews are denied that service, he stated.
In an email viewed by JNS, a consular employee wrote to the woman to inform her that she and any of her relatives residing at her address are not eligible for consular services.
The email did not mention whether the consular section in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv would be able to provide the woman and her relatives with services. It suggested that international law prevented any Belgian consular section from handling her request. The Ramat Gan consular section did not reply to JNS on the matter by press time.
“After reviewing our population records, we have determined that you have settled in a settlement that is not recognized under international law, to which Belgium is bound,” the email said. It used the politically loaded term “colony” to denote the locale where the woman resides.
The decision appears to be part of a series of measures against Israel introduced in September by the foreign ministry under Maxime Prévot.
By extending the ban to the members of the woman’s family residing at her address without individual assessment, the consulate imposed “a collective and indiscriminate measure against Belgian citizens,” Pais also said.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who assumed office in February, had appeared to diverge from the anti-Israel policies of his predecessor, Alexander de Croo. De Wever said he was skeptical of recognizing Palestinian statehood and that his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not be arrested if he visited, despite a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
However, under De Wever, Belgium last month joined South Africa’s disputed genocide lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague, and vowed in September to recognize Palestinian statehood, albeit only if the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip was dismantled.
De Wever’s Foreign Minister, Maxime Prévot, said in September that this was to “mark the condemnation of Israel’s expansionist ambitions, with its colonization programs and military occupations.”
De Wever’s New Flemish Alliance Party is in a fragile coalition agreement with Prévot’s center-left Les Engagés (“The Committed Ones”) Party.
The new consular policy is significant because “Belgium is not sanctioning Israel here, but its own citizens,” Pais said. “That this policy disproportionately affects Belgian Jews living in Israel makes this discrimination unacceptable.”
He added that consular assistance must be offered “equally and without discrimination, regardless of origin, religion, or place of residence.”
