Brussels (Brussels Morning) – Wallonia, led by Minister-President Elio Di Rupo, bans arms transit to Israel following media revelations of munitions shipments despite previous commitments. Amnesty International praises the decision after long advocacy efforts.
Wallonia has administered a ban on the transit of all arms from its territory towards Israel, the region’s Minister-President Elio Di Rupo (PS) confirmed to Media.
What prompted the investigation into arms shipments?
The decision followed an examination by Belgium‘s francophone national news channel RTBF, as well as Le Soir and De Morgen, which disclosed that 70 tonnes of munitions and explosives had travelled via Liège airport to Israel since 7 October.
This was despite a pledge made in February by the Walloon government to control lethal weapons from passing via the territory to the Jewish State. The media investigation indicated that a legal loophole had permitted arms transit to continue, with the military material sent from New York and stopping in Liège en route to Tel Aviv.
Who is Challenge Airlines and its CEO?
Shipments were conducted by Challenge Airlines, an airfreight logistics company which works predominantly via transit hubs in Israel, Malta, and Belgium. The company’s CEO, Yossi Shoukroun, is himself an Israeli national.
Commenting on the details of the cargo, Wies De Graeve of Amnesty International in Flanders demonstrated that the material was “military equipment from the US handing via the Israeli-American airfreight company Challenge”.
How did the loophole allow arms transit to continue?
The airline was able to manipulate a legal blind spot by transiting via Liège without repositioning goods between aircraft. Until now, planes did not mandate a licence to make a short stop in Wallonia airports delivering that cargoes were not moved from the aircraft. But on Monday, Di Rupo’s office inscribed a ministerial decree banning all transit of arms towards Israel, regardless of whether the cargo exits 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 stated in a statement.
How did international organizations respond to the ban?
But despite welcoming the action, Amnesty International insisted that evidence of the shipments was already known: “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 disclosed that arms deliveries were pushed to the Israeli Army via the airport of Bierse, in Liège. The Israeli war on Gaza led Belgium’s Federal Mobility Minister Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo) to call on all Belgian governments to exert extreme caution “so that Belgium is not complicit in the war.”
