Belgium will recognise the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) later this month, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot has announced.
“Palestine will be recognised by Belgium at the UN session! And firm sanctions will be imposed against the Israeli government,” Prevot, who is also the deputy prime minister, wrote on the social media platform X early on Tuesday.
Israel will face 12 sanctions from Belgium, Prevot said, including a ban on the import of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and “a review of public procurement policies with Israeli companies”.
Prevot, a member of the centrist Les Engages party, or The Engaged, said Belgium was making the pledge “in light of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Palestine, particularly in Gaza”.
“We’ve seen the horrible situation on the ground, with people starving, and it’s totally unacceptable. Cutting off all humanitarian aid is a war crime,” he told Al Jazeera.
He added that the decision also came in the wake of Israel’s relaunching of the illegal E1 settlement project in the occupied East Jerusalem and illegal settlement expansions “to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution”.
Recognition should be with ‘no conditions’
The Belgian foreign minister, however, said the recognition would only be formalised once the last captive has been released from Gaza and “Hamas no longer has any role in managing Palestine”.
“From an intellectual point of view, the recognition of a state should be with no conditions. But we also have to manage the different sensitivities within the Belgian coalition. We are five parties, and we are not necessarily aligned,” Prevot said.
Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Belgium’s move to recognise Palestinian statehood was “long overdue”, but that caveats “hollow it out of any meaning or consequence”.
Shehada told Al Jazeera that in its current formulation, Belgium’s decision risked giving Netanyahu’s government yet another incentive to reject a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.
He added that the move should be considered as a stepping stone to the question of advancing Palestinian statehood, which requires imposing sanctions, isolating Israel and marginalising hardliners within its government.
Palestinian foreign ministry welcomes the decision
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Belgium‘s announcement and called on other countries to follow suit “to intensify practical efforts to stop the crimes of genocide, displacement, starvation, and annexation, and to open a real political path to resolve the conflict”.
In a statement on X, the ministry said it considered the move “to be in line with international law and United Nations resolutions, and protective of the two-state solution and supportive of achieving peace”.
The Israeli government did not immediately issue an official statement.
But Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Israel’s opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party, says Belgium’s decision is a “direct result” of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “political failure”.
“Due to Netanyahu’s inability to manage the political arena, a Palestinian state is being established before our eyes,” Lieberman said in a post on X.
“Belgium’s decision to join the recognition and sanctions move is another direct result of his political failure,” he added.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, from the New Flemish Alliance party, said last month that recognising Palestine should be linked to strict conditions, according to Belgium’s Belga news agency.
At the end of July, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise Palestinian statehood when world leaders meet for the UNGA.
Although Belgium’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood may seem like a merely symbolic act, there is great momentum across Europe, said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Brussels.
“This means that each European country that says ‘I therefore recognise Palestine’ will recognise the sovereignty of the Palestinian independent state with borders that existed pre-1967, including the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and the full establishment of diplomatic relations with the Palestinian state.”
As more European countries continue to recognise Palestine, “this is going to put more pressure on Luxembourg and Italy in particular” to follow suit.
France and Saudi Arabia will co-host the meeting on Palestinian recognition during the UNGA on September 22. Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom have also said they plan to recognise Palestine this month, also with conditions.
An issue with the declaration put forward by France and Saudi Arabia at the UN, which calls for Palestinians and Israelis to discuss the future of the two-state solution, is convincing many Arab countries that Hamas should be dismantled once the war in Gaza has ended, said Ahelbarra.
The question is whether that consensus will be reached, as it is clear from “every statement coming from European countries, that’s for them [dismantling Hamas] a prerequisite for a full recognition of the Palestinian statehood”, said Ahelbarra.
As of April this year, some 147 countries, representing 75 percent of UN members, had already recognised Palestinian statehood.
Israel and the United States have strongly criticised countries moving to recognise Palestine, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing France’s announcement as a “reckless decision” that “only serves Hamas propaganda”.
Rubio has since announced that US President Donald Trump’s administration will deny and revoke visas for Palestinian officials in advance of the UNGA in New York.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned last year that a new illegal Israeli settlement would be established in the occupied West Bank for every country that recognises Palestine.
Smotrich is one of two far-right Israeli ministers facing sanctions from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, has implored that countries take measures to end Israel’s war on Gaza, including by imposing sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel.
The 12 new sanctions announced by Prevot on Tuesday appear to be wide-ranging in nature, although they primarily relate to the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Last month, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned after he said he could not secure cabinet support for “meaningful” additional sanctions against Israel amid its brutal war on Gaza.
On August 22, a UN-backed monitor officially declared that famine is occurring in the northern Gaza Strip and is projected to spread to central and southern areas by the end of September.
Belgium’s decision to recognise Palestine comes as Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 63,557 people and wounded 160,660 more.
In July, Belgian prosecutors referred a war crimes complaint against two Israeli soldiers to the International Criminal Court (ICC), following allegations that they participated in atrocities in Gaza.
