Belgium Makes Its Jewish Citizens Pay for Its Anti-Israel Policy—on Dubious Legal Grounds

 A routine passport renewal has become a fundamental test of the relationship between the Belgian State and its citizens.

According to The Times of Israel, Belgian-Israeli citizen Annabelle Herciger-Tenzer was denied the renewal of her long-held Belgian passport after the Belgian consulate in Jerusalem determined that her home in Pisgat Zeev was located beyond the Green Line, in an area Belgium considers an unlawful Israeli settlement.

Herciger-Tenzer, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who emigrated from Belgium to Israel in 1980, has lived in Pisgat Zeev for more than 20 years. The consulate reportedly informed her that it could not register her at that address and that she had consequently been removed from its population register.

Because ordinary passport and administrative services abroad are generally available only to Belgian citizens registered with a consular post, that deregistration effectively prevented her from renewing her passport.

For Herciger-Tenzer, it felt like “being slapped in the face”. Her emotional reaction is understandable. The country of which she remains a citizen was not accusing her of fraud, criminal activity or posing a danger to public security. It was denying her an ordinary service of citizenship because it disapproved of where she lived.

The case raises a fundamental legal question:

Can Belgium refuse to issue or renew a Belgian passport solely because a citizen resides in territory whose political or legal status Belgium disputes?

In my view, compelling constitutional, administrative and human-rights arguments suggest that the answer is no.

A deliberate Belgian policy

This was not simply an isolated consular misunderstanding.

In September 2025, the Belgian federal government instructed the foreign minister to restrict consular services for Belgian citizens residing in Israeli settlements to the minimum emergency assistance required by law. The measure formed part of a wider package reflecting Belgium’s increasingly hostile position towards Israel and its policies in the territories occupied since 1967.

The official government agreement expressly refers to ending extended consular services for Belgian citizens living in settlements.

In a subsequent answer to the Belgian Parliament, the foreign minister confirmed that affected citizens could still receive emergency travel documents but would no longer receive ordinary administrative assistance. Normal services would resume only if they proved that they had moved outside a settlement or registered again in Belgium.

In other words, a Belgian citizen may remain Belgian, but Belgium will substantially restrict the practical services attached to that citizenship until the person changes an address of which the government disapproves.

Belgium presents this as the implementation of international law. In practice, however, it transforms a foreign-policy position into a personal penalty imposed upon individual citizens—overwhelmingly Jewish citizens—who have not been accused of any unlawful personal conduct.

The government insists that the policy applies irrespective of religion, age or second nationality. Formally, that may be true. But a policy can be expressed in geographically neutral language while still placing its practical burden almost entirely upon one identifiable community.

Proving intentionally antisemitic discrimination would require additional evidence. Nevertheless, the discriminatory effect of the measure and its impact upon Belgian Jewish citizens deserve serious constitutional scrutiny.

A passport is not a political favour

A Belgian passport is not a discretionary reward granted only to citizens whose personal choices correspond with the government’s foreign policy.

It is the official document through which the Belgian State confirms the nationality and identity of one of its citizens and enables that citizen to travel internationally. Its issuance is connected to nationality, not to governmental approval of a citizen’s political opinions, lifestyle or place of residence.

A Belgian citizen remains Belgian whether he or she lives in Brussels, New York, Moscow, Beijing, Casablanca, Jerusalem or Pisgat Zeev.

A passport is the practical expression of that nationality.

Belgium’s Consular Code provides that a passport application is admissible when an applicant establishes Belgian nationality and identity. It also sets out grounds upon which a passport may be refused.

Those grounds include judicial restrictions on liberty, investigations involving passport or identity-document offences, false information concerning identity or nationality, certain parental objections involving minors, and a substantial threat to public order or public security supported by a reasoned assessment.

Residence in an Israeli settlement is not included.

The government has therefore not principally relied upon the passport-refusal provisions. Instead, it has created an indirect barrier through consular deregistration.

Ordinary administrative assistance is generally reserved for Belgian citizens registered at a consular post. By removing citizens from the register because Belgium refuses to recognise their addresses, the government makes ordinary passport renewal unavailable without formally adding a new refusal ground to the Consular Code.

This administrative detour is the central rule-of-law problem. What the government may not be authorised to do directly under the passport provisions, it is attempting to achieve indirectly through population-registration rules.

The questionable use of consular deregistration

The Royal Decree governing Belgian consular population registers allows ex officio deregistration when a person no longer resides at the registered address and the authorities cannot determine the new habitual residence.

That does not appear to describe Herciger-Tenzer’s situation.

Belgium knows where she lives. She has not disappeared, provided a false address or moved without notification. The government simply refuses to accept the legal validity of her address because of its position on the status of Pisgat Zeev.

Belgium may argue that the Consular Code requires citizens to demonstrate that their habitual residence has been “legally established” and that residence documents issued by Israel cannot establish lawful residence in occupied territory.

That interpretation remains contestable.

There is an essential distinction between recognising the factual location of a citizen and recognising sovereignty over that location. Belgium can record that a citizen lives in Pisgat Zeev without recognising Pisgat Zeev as sovereign Israeli territory. It can employ a neutral territorial designation, add an administrative reservation or decline to record “Israel” as the sovereign state responsible for the area.

The factual address does not cease to exist merely because Belgium disputes the legal status of the territory.

Administrative registration is supposed to record reality. It should not be transformed into a mechanism for making politically inconvenient citizens legally invisible.

Equality under the Belgian Constitution

Articles 10 and 11 of the BELGIAN CONSTITUTION guarantee equality before the law and prohibit unjustified discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms recognised for Belgian citizens.

Belgian citizens do not lose their equal legal status when they move abroad. Belgians living in countries whose governments or policies Brussels strongly opposes continue to receive passports and consular services.

Denying the same ordinary services to another group of Belgian citizens solely because of their residence creates a clear difference in treatment.

Not every difference in treatment is unconstitutional. Belgium may distinguish between categories of citizens when the distinction has an objective and reasonable justification, pursues a legitimate purpose and remains proportionate to that purpose.

But the justification must be particularly persuasive when the consequence is the denial of a basic document of nationality.

Belgium’s political opposition to Israeli settlements may be a legitimate foreign-policy position. That does not automatically justify restricting the individual rights of Belgian citizens who live there.

Foreign policy cannot simply replace law.

Nor can a general political declaration create a new passport-disqualification ground that the legislature did not include in the Consular Code.

International law does not require passport refusal

Belgium’s territorial position is supported by substantial international authority.

In its July 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful. It stated that other countries must not recognise the resulting situation as legal or provide aid or assistance that helps to maintain it.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 likewise calls upon states to distinguish, in their dealings, between Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.

Belgium is therefore entitled to distinguish between recognised Israeli territory and territory occupied since 1967. It may use neutral geographic terminology, restrict settlement-related trade, decline to recognise Israeli administrative claims or take measures against activities that materially contribute to maintaining settlements.

But neither the International Court of Justice nor the Security Council has instructed countries to deny passports to their own citizens living in those territories.

Issuing a passport does not recognise sovereignty over the passport holder’s home. A passport confirms the holder’s identity and nationality. It does not certify that the holder’s residence is lawful or endorse the political choices of the person receiving it.

International law itself recognises that non-recognition has limits. In its 1971 Namibia advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice warned that non-recognition should not be applied in ways that deprive inhabitants of ordinary civil protections. It referred specifically to acts such as the registration of births, deaths and marriages that should not be disregarded when doing so would harm the population.

The same underlying principle is relevant here. Non-recognition is directed against an unlawful territorial situation. It should not be converted into a tool for depriving individual citizens of civil documentation or travel rights.

The legal status of a territory and the legal bond between a state and its citizens are separate matters.

Belgium may dispute Israeli sovereignty over Pisgat Zeev. It cannot dispute Herciger-Tenzer’s Belgian nationality simply because she lives there.

The international right to travel

Refusing to issue or renew a passport also raises serious questions under international human-rights law.

Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to leave any country, including one’s own. It also prohibits the arbitrary denial of the right to enter one’s own country.

Restrictions on the right to leave must be provided by law, necessary for one of a limited number of recognised purposes and consistent with the other rights protected by the Covenant.

The treaty does not expressly state that every citizen has an absolute right to a particular passport booklet. Nevertheless, the right to international travel becomes largely illusory when the state of nationality refuses to provide the travel document required to exercise it.

The UN Human Rights Committee made this explicit in General Comment No. 27. Because international travel ordinarily requires a passport, the right to leave a country includes practical access to the necessary travel documents. Refusing to issue or renew a passport for a citizen living abroad may therefore interfere with that right.

Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights similarly protects the right to leave any country. The European Court of Human Rights’ official guidance treats the refusal to issue or renew travel documents as an interference requiring a clear legal basis, a recognised legitimate objective, proportionality and effective judicial safeguards.

A particularly revealing comparison comes from Belgium itself.

In Cimpaka Kapeta v. Belgium, the European Court upheld Belgium’s refusal to issue a passport to a man previously convicted of involvement in a terrorist organisation. The decision was based on an individual security assessment, was not indefinite, could be reviewed by Belgium’s Council of State and was mitigated by his ability to use a Belgian identity card for certain journeys.

Residence in Pisgat Zeev supplies none of those individual security considerations.

The Belgian settlement policy applies automatically to every affected citizen, including children, without any allegation of fraud, criminal conduct, passport misuse or danger to public security. A blanket address-based restriction is therefore considerably more difficult to reconcile with the Convention’s proportionality requirements.

European Union law

European Union law adds another dimension.

Article 4 of Directive 2004/38 requires member states, acting in accordance with their national laws, to issue and renew an identity card or passport stating the nationality of their citizens.

The provision does not necessarily guarantee both a passport and an identity card. Its application is also less straightforward when a Belgian citizen resides outside the European Union. If the person retains a valid Belgian identity card that permits travel within the EU, the severity of the restriction may be reduced.

But it is not eliminated.

A Belgian identity card does not provide the same worldwide travel possibilities as a passport. An emergency travel document is intended for exceptional situations and is not an equivalent replacement for an ordinary passport. Nor does possession of an Israeli passport release Belgium from its obligations towards one of its own nationals.

Dual nationality cannot become an excuse for providing one citizen with fewer rights than another.

The proportionality problem

Even if Belgium’s objective is to discourage residence in settlements, refusing ordinary passport services is an exceptionally severe and poorly targeted means of pursuing that objective.

The proportionality principle requires the government to demonstrate that a restriction is suitable, necessary and no more burdensome than required.

It is difficult to see how issuing an ordinary Belgian passport materially supports or legitimises an Israeli settlement. The passport does not grant ownership of property, finance construction, facilitate settlement trade or recognise Israeli sovereignty.

At most, it enables a Belgian citizen to travel.

Less restrictive alternatives are readily available. Belgium could:

• register the factual address using neutral terminology;
• omit any reference to Israeli sovereignty;
• attach an administrative qualification to the consular record;
• process the passport through another Belgian authority;
• separate passport entitlement from the disputed-address question; or
• adopt individually targeted measures against conduct that genuinely contributes to an unlawful situation.

A blanket refusal affecting all Belgian citizens in a defined area, regardless of age, conduct, individual circumstances or travel needs, appears difficult to justify when these alternatives exist.

Telling citizens that they can regain services by moving is not a minor administrative condition. It amounts to using access to nationality documents as pressure to change their homes.

The precedent Belgium is creating

Allowing political disagreement over a disputed territory to determine whether citizens receive passports would create a dangerous precedent.

If Belgium may deny ordinary passport services to citizens living in the occupied Palestinian territories, could it adopt the same policy towards Belgians living in Crimea, Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, Abkhazia or another territory whose sovereignty Belgium does not recognise?

These territorial situations are not legally identical. But they expose the same underlying danger: turning a government’s position on territorial sovereignty into a restriction upon the individual status of its citizens.

The principle should be approached with extreme caution.

The bond between a democratic state and its nationals is founded upon citizenship—not political approval of where those citizens choose to live.

Once passports become instruments for disciplining citizens over foreign-policy disagreements, nationality itself risks becoming conditional.

How other democracies regulate passports

A review of passport legislation and official policy in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands reveals no comparable rule under which residence in disputed or occupied territory is, by itself, a ground for refusing a passport.

The United Kingdom permits refusal or withdrawal in circumstances involving arrest warrants, court orders, terrorism, serious organised crime, safeguarding or document misuse. Decisions must be necessary and proportionate.

The United States recognises grounds including outstanding warrants, judicial travel restrictions, fraud, certain serious debts and conduct abroad capable of causing grave damage to national security or foreign policy. Even its broad foreign-policy provision focuses on the citizen’s conduct, not merely an address.

The Canadian Passport Order addresses criminal proceedings, false information, passport misuse, terrorism, child protection and national security. Australia follows a similarly statutory and individualised system.

France ordinarily permits refusal when there is a genuine doubt about identity or nationality, while terrorism-related travel restrictions require a separate legal procedure. Germany requires concrete facts demonstrating a recognised danger and directs authorities to consider limited alternatives where a complete refusal would be disproportionate.

The common pattern is clear. Democratic states generally restrict passports because of individual conduct, a demonstrable risk and an express legal rule. Such restrictions are normally accompanied by reasons, proportionality assessment and access to review.

Among the systems examined, none treats mere residence in a politically disputed territory as an independent passport disqualification.

A policy vulnerable to judicial challenge

Belgium can defend its policy by arguing that it applies to all citizens in settlements regardless of religion, that emergency travel documents remain available and that the measure implements Belgium’s obligation not to recognise or assist an unlawful territorial situation.

Those arguments deserve to be heard, but they do not resolve the fundamental legal objections.

Belgium must still demonstrate:

• a sufficiently precise legal basis for the restriction;
• compatibility with the refusal grounds in the Consular Code;
• an objective and reasonable justification for treating citizens differently according to residence;
• a legitimate purpose recognised by human-rights law;
• a concrete connection between issuing a passport and maintaining an unlawful territorial situation;
• the absence of less restrictive alternatives; and
• adequate individual reasoning and effective judicial review.

No published Belgian Council of State judgment resolving the legality of this policy had appeared by 4 August 2026. The final answer must therefore come from the courts, and the precise outcome may depend on whether an affected citizen retains another valid Belgian travel document or has access to a realistic alternative renewal procedure.

It would consequently be premature to declare every application of the policy definitively unlawful.

It is nevertheless legally vulnerable.

Belgium is entitled to oppose Israeli settlement policy. It is entitled to distinguish between recognised Israeli territory and territory occupied since 1967. It may reflect that distinction in its diplomacy, trade policies, sanctions and administrative terminology.

What it should not be entitled to do is make the ordinary rights of Belgian nationality dependent upon whether a citizen lives on the politically approved side of the Green Line.

A democratic state owes equal protection to all its citizens. That protection cannot depend on the geography of their residence abroad.

A passport recognises citizenship—not territory.

Belgium’s foreign policy must not be enforced by making its Jewish citizens pay the price.