{"id":427,"date":"2026-02-09T03:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/427\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T03:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:32:09","slug":"belgium-to-recognise-palestinian-statehood-impose-sanctions-on-israel-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/427\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgium to recognise Palestinian statehood, impose sanctions on Israel | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belgium will recognise the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) later this month<\/a>, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot has announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestine will be recognised by Belgium at the UN session! And firm sanctions will be imposed against the Israeli government,\u201d Prevot, who is also the deputy prime minister, wrote on the social media platform X early on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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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 \u201ca review of public procurement policies with Israeli companies\u201d.<\/p>\n

Prevot, a member of the centrist Les Engages party, or The Engaged, said Belgium was making the pledge \u201cin light of the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Palestine, particularly in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen the horrible situation on the ground, with people starving, and it\u2019s totally unacceptable. Cutting off all humanitarian aid is a war crime,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

He added that the decision also came in the wake of Israel\u2019s relaunching of the illegal E1 settlement project<\/a> in the occupied East Jerusalem and illegal settlement expansions \u201cto preserve the possibility of a two-state solution\u201d.<\/p>\n

Recognition should be with \u2018no conditions\u2019<\/p>\n

The Belgian foreign minister, however, said the recognition would only be formalised once the last captive has been released from Gaza and \u201cHamas no longer has any role in managing Palestine\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom 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,\u201d Prevot said.<\/p>\n

Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Belgium\u2019s move to recognise Palestinian statehood was \u201clong overdue\u201d, but that caveats \u201chollow it out of any meaning or consequence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Shehada told Al Jazeera that in its current formulation, Belgium\u2019s decision risked giving Netanyahu\u2019s government yet another incentive to reject a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Palestinian foreign ministry welcomes the decision<\/p>\n

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Belgium<\/a>\u2018s announcement and called on other countries to follow suit \u201cto intensify practical efforts to stop the crimes of genocide, displacement, starvation, and annexation, and to open a real political path to resolve the conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement on X, the ministry said it considered the move \u201cto be in line with international law and United Nations resolutions, and protective of the two-state solution and supportive of achieving peace\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government did not immediately issue an official statement.<\/p>\n

But Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Israel\u2019s opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party, says Belgium\u2019s decision is a \u201cdirect result\u201d of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s \u201cpolitical failure\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to Netanyahu\u2019s inability to manage the political arena, a Palestinian state is being established before our eyes,\u201d Lieberman said in a post on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelgium\u2019s decision to join the recognition and sanctions move is another direct result of his political failure,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Belga news agency.<\/p>\n

At the end of July, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognise<\/a> Palestinian statehood when world leaders meet for the UNGA.<\/p>\n

Although Belgium\u2019s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood may seem like a merely symbolic act, there is great momentum across Europe, said Al Jazeera\u2019s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Brussels.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that each European country that says \u2018I therefore recognise Palestine\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

As more European countries continue to recognise Palestine, \u201cthis is going to put more pressure on Luxembourg and Italy in particular\u201d to follow suit.<\/p>\n

France and Saudi Arabia will co-host the meeting on Palestinian recognition during the UNGA on September 22. Australia<\/a>, Canada<\/a>, and the United Kingdom<\/a> have also said they plan to recognise Palestine this month, also with conditions.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The question is whether that consensus will be reached, as it is clear from \u201cevery statement coming from European countries, that\u2019s for them [dismantling Hamas] a prerequisite for a full recognition of the Palestinian statehood\u201d, said Ahelbarra.<\/p>\n

As of April this year, some 147 countries, representing 75 percent of UN members, had already recognised Palestinian statehood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Israel and the United States have strongly criticised<\/a> countries moving to recognise Palestine, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing France\u2019s announcement as a \u201creckless decision\u201d that \u201conly serves Hamas propaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rubio has since announced that US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration will deny and revoke visas<\/a> for Palestinian officials in advance of the UNGA in New York.<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned last year<\/a> that a new illegal Israeli settlement would be established in the occupied West Bank for every country that recognises Palestine.<\/p>\n

Smotrich is one of two far-right Israeli ministers facing sanctions<\/a> from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, has implored that countries take measures to end Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, including by imposing sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Last month, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned<\/a> after he said he could not secure cabinet support for \u201cmeaningful\u201d additional sanctions against Israel amid its brutal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

On August 22, a UN-backed monitor officially declared that famine<\/a> is occurring in the northern Gaza Strip and is projected to spread to central and southern areas by the end of September.<\/p>\n

Belgium\u2019s decision to recognise Palestine comes as Israel\u2019s war on Gaza<\/a> has killed at least 63,557 people and wounded 160,660 more.<\/p>\n

In July, Belgian prosecutors referred a war crimes<\/a> complaint against two Israeli soldiers to the International Criminal Court (ICC), following allegations that they participated in atrocities in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgium will recognise the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) later this month, Belgian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,69,485,487,144,486,488],"class_list":{"0":"post-427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-israel-palestine-conflict","11":"tag-middle-east","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-occupied-west-bank","14":"tag-palestine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}