BELGIUM - Denies Passport Renewal to Jew

An Israeli citizen said that the Belgian consulate denied her request to renew her long-held Belgian passport because she lives in the Pisgat Zeev neighborhood of Jerusalem, located beyond the Green Line.

Annabelle Herciger-Tenzer told Channel 12 news that after submitting the request, she received the following response from the consulate: “After reviewing our population registry records, we found that you reside in a settlement that is not recognized under international law, to which Belgium is committed. Therefore, it was not possible to register you at this address in the population registry of the Belgian consulate in Jerusalem. Accordingly, we hereby inform you that you are no longer registered with this mission.”

Pisgat Zeev—Jerusalem’s largest residential neighborhood, home to some 50,000 people—falls within the municipal borders of Jerusalem but is across the 1949 armistice line known as the Green Line and is therefore considered an illegal Israeli settlement by the majority of the international community.

Brussels has taken an increasingly negative stance against Israel in the wake of the war against Hamas in Gaza and, along with many other European states, recognized a Palestinian state at the UN last year.

-www.timesofisrael.com, 13 May 2026

Commentary: What, for instance, would I do if the passport agency refused to renew mine because Columbia, South Carolina is “Indian territory”? That would certainly be laughable, but not so when it comes to Jews and Jerusalem. Incidentally, the term “Indian territory” really applies to the entire United States—as a matter of fact, to the entire continent, North and South.

One senses how the devil so desperately attempts to specifically attack Jerusalem, dividing it among the nations contrary to Biblical laws: “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it” (Zecheriah 12:2-3).

(See Why Jerusalem Is Jewish, Item #1070, $2.)