Wallonia has issued a ban on the transit of all arms from its territory towards Israel, the region's Minister-President Elio Di Rupo (PS) confirmed to Le Soir.
The decision followed an investigation by Belgium's francophone national news channel RTBF, as well as Le Soir and De Morgen, which revealed that 70 tonnes of munitions and explosives had transited via Liège airport to Israel since Hamas attack on 7 October. This was despite a commitment made in February by the Walloon government to prevent lethal weapons from passing via the region to the Jewish State.
The media investigation revealed that a legal loophole had allowed arms transit to continue, with the military material sent from New York and stopping in Liège en route to Tel Aviv.
Shipments were handled by Challenge Airlines, an airfreight logistics company which operates predominantly via transit hubs in Israel, Malta, and Belgium. The company's CEO, Yossi Shoukroun, is himself an Israeli national.
Israel's second largest air freight operator, Challenge is a private company established since the launch of cargo freight in Bierset. Credit: Belga / Didier Dehoe
Commenting on the details of the cargo, Wies De Graeve of Amnesty International in Flanders confirmed that the material was "military equipment from the US passing via the Israeli-American airfreight company Challenge".
The airline was able to exploit a legal blind spot by transiting via Liège without transferring goods between aircraft. Until now, planes did not require a licence to make a short stop in Wallonia airports providing that cargoes were not moved from the aircraft. But on Monday, Di Rupo's office signed a ministerial decree forbidding all transit of arms towards Israel, regardless of whether the cargo leaves the aircraft or not.
"Given the situation in Gaza and the decisions of the International Court of Justice, the Minister-President has signed a ministerial decree forbidding all transport of arms, with our without transhipment, towards Israel," Di Rupo's office said in a statement.
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But despite welcoming the measure, Amnesty International insisted that evidence of the shipments was already available: "It required NGOs to publically intervene on multiple occasions [to bring about this decision]." The NGO lamented that "it took more than seven months since the start of the war in Gaza [for this decision to be made.]"
Last November it was revealed that arms deliveries were made to the Israeli Army via the airport of Bierset, in Liège. The Israeli offensive on Gaza led Belgium's Federal Mobility Minister Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo) to call on all Belgian governments to exercise extreme caution "so that Belgium is not complicit in the war."
Wallonia has a reputation of being complicit in human rights violations across the world by allowing arms export, according to an article in The Brussels Times in June last year. The Walloon Arms Observatory was quoted as pointing to Minister-President Di Rupo as responsible for the arms export decisions.
