BY JEF TEUGELS

When Prime Minister Bart De Wever said, “Don’t act as if your position is morally superior to someone else’s,” it sounded like a plea for humility. [Bart De Wever, Goeiemorgen morgen!, Radio 2, August 30, 2025.]

But humility in politics is never neutral.

In this case, it is an alibi — a way to strip urgency from atrocity. To lecture against moral superiority while bombs fall on Gaza is not philosophy; it is complicity dressed in civility.

The timing matters: the remark came as Belgium was papering over internal fractures with a midnight deal — recognition of Palestine, but only on impossible conditions; sanctions, but only against a few disposable figures.

This is not nuance. It is evasion.

After weeks of tension, the federal and Flemish governments announced their patchwork agreement: sanction extremist settlers and Hamas leaders, and recognize Palestine — but only if Hamas first dissolves itself and frees every hostage. Analysts call it “a typical Belgian compromise.” Indeed: layered, conditional, and engineered not to offend anyone too deeply.

But what exactly does this recognition recognize? By tying Palestine’s legitimacy to the self-liquidation of Hamas — a precondition as improbable as it is cynical — Belgium hollows the gesture of all substance. It is recognition on the installment plan, payable only when reality itself changes. That is not diplomacy; it is procrastination.

Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot admitted recognition “should be unconditional,” but coalition sensitivities forced concessions. By tying it to Hamas’s disappearance, Belgium transforms what should be a symbolic assertion of rights into a mirage of deferred justice.

As analyst Muhammad Shehada noted, the condition perversely incentivizes Israel to prolong the conflict rather than resolve it.

The sanctions package is no less cosmetic. Belgium trumpets “firm measures,” but the teeth are capped. Individuals — violent settlers, far-right Israeli ministers, Hamas leaders — are named and shamed. But the machinery of occupation, the military-industrial links, the financial flows? Untouched. As EW Magazine reported, the Flemish trade office in Tel Aviv continues its work, albeit with symbolic restrictions. Military ties are “under review,” which is bureaucratese for “we will stall until the cameras move on.”

Such half-measures are not designed to change Israeli policy. They are designed to protect Belgian politicians from accusations of doing nothing. In other words, sanctions as stagecraft.

Why this contorted compromise? Not moral reflection, but coalition arithmetic. Flemish partners threatened to collapse the government if action was postponed, while N-VA and MR resisted anything that smelled “anti-Israel.” The final outcome was a patch stitched from fear of losing seats, not fear of losing lives.

As EW Magazine also noted, De Wever himself skipped the decisive meeting, attending instead a Chamber of Commerce event. Absence as presence: the message was clear — commerce before conscience, lobbyists before law, boardrooms before bomb shelters.

Belgium’s compromise was not born in the shadow of Gaza, but in the fluorescent light of coalition offices where political survival eclipses human survival. This is what Wicked Problems describes as the system “working exactly as designed — for the benefit of the status quo.”

Political ambiguity always comes wrapped in rhetoric. Matthias Diependaele quipped, “I don’t know who the bigger scoundrel is.” [Matthias Diependaele, De Ochtend, Radio 1, and VRT NWS, August 30, 2025]

Denis Ducarme suggested, with breathtaking indifference, that “the humanitarian situation in some parts of Gaza is less dire.” [Denis Ducarme, VRT NWS and Radio Judaica, August 18, 2025.] These are not slips of the tongue. They are the grammar of cowardice — relativize, minimize, blur.

Once suffering is made abstract, accountability can be indefinitely postponed. Belgium’s compromise fits neatly into this grammar: principled in appearance, evasive in substance.

The ambiguity does not stop at coalition boundaries; it corrodes the parties themselves.

Within the MR, MP Michel De Maegd was barred by chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez from a debate on Palestine. His protest — calling it an “autocratic derailment” — revealed a liberal party that now resembles less a forum of ideas than a miniature Trumpist fiefdom.

Bouchez’s retort — that citizens expect more than “whining about debates” — confirmed the diagnosis. Both statements were reported in the same coverage. Gaza policy has become not just a foreign-policy flashpoint but a mirror exposing the decay of Belgian liberalism itself.

Jef Teugels is Regenerative Relationships and Learning Director for the Regenerative Marketing Institute. He is based in Belgium and Krakow, Poland.