Belgium is to join France and Malta in recognising Palestine, while slamming Israel with bilateral sanctions in the face of EU inaction on the Gaza war.
"Belgium wishes to send a strong political and diplomatic signal by joining the nations that will announce recognition of the State of Palestine on the sidelines of the ... United Nations General Assembly [UNGA]," said Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot in a statement late on Monday (1 September).
"Belgium will only formalise this recognition of the Palestinian state by royal decree once the last [Israeli] hostage has been released and terrorist organisations such as Hamas have been removed from the governance of Palestine," he added, in a caveat.
The other countries planning to recognise Palestine at UNGA, which starts on 9 September, are Australia, Canada, France, Malta, and the UK.
Palestine is already recognised by 11 out of 27 EU states - Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czechs, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
Most of them did it in the 1980s when they were under Soviet control and had no choice but to play Russia's geopolitical games.
And the Czechs and Hungarians are Israel's biggest EU allies today despite their recognition.
Sweden did it in 2014, while Ireland, Slovenia, and Spain did it this year in reaction to the Gaza carnage.
Palestine has been recognised by 147 states in total, but is not a UN member due to a veto by Israel's ally, the US.
Meanwhile, the Belgian sanctions are to include: blacklisting two extremist Israeli government ministers (Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir), blacklisting violent Israeli settlers, and banning imports of Israeli settler products.
They will also include an arms embargo and a ban on transit of arms shipments via Belgian airspace - even though Belgium has a dodgy track record in enforcing a previous ban on one Israeli airline that ships weapons there.
"As long as the war continues, requests from Israeli authorities for military flights to overfly our airspace will be refused," Prévot said.
Belgium had a "duty to prevent any risk of genocide", he added.
The Netherlands and Slovenia have also blacklisted Smotrich and Ben-Gvir at national level, while Ireland is currently passing legislation to curb bilateral trade with Israel.
And Germany has banned new contracts for tank parts for Israel's war machine.
The patchwork of national measures comes in reaction to the EU's inability to agree any sanctions against Israel at the level of the EU27.
The main opponents have been the Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, and Italians.
Israel has killed over 63,000 people in Gaza and demolished almost all of its residential buildings, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure.
It has also amped up violence and settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Its actions come after Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel in 2023, killing over 1,200 people and taking over 200 hostages.
But its strategy also fits with Zionist extremist ideology espoused by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, to annex Gaza and the West Bank, creating a greater Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
It already annexed East Jerusalem in 1980.
The EU never recognised this and EU states have their embassies in Tel Aviv instead of Israel's self-declared capital of Jerusalem.
US president Donald Trump did endorse Israel's conquest of Jerusalem in his first term in office in 2017.
He has backed forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and banned Palestinian leaders from attending UNGA, in an unprecedented step as the UN host nation, which was roundly criticised by EU foreign ministers when they met in Copenhagen last Saturday.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio also discussed West Bank annexation with Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar in Washington last week, according to Reuters.
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.