Commotion took place at a municipal council meeting in the Brussels commune of Jette on Wednesday evening: several councillors left the meeting after the Palestinian flag was called "the flag of a terrorist movement" during a debate on its presence in front of the town hall.
Members of the Francophone socialist party PS, the Belgian Workers' Party (PVDA/PTB) and Team Fouad Ahidar left the meeting after the leader of the MR-Open VLD group Olivier Corhay called the Palestinian flag "the flag of a terrorist movement," RTBF reports.
Videos on social media show that he also called the leader of the Socialist Party (PS) group, Leila Agic, a "terrorist."
It all started with a question from Agic, who expressed surprise at the fact that the Palestinian flag on the front of the Jette town hall had only remained in place for a few days last month, at a time when several organisations spoke of a serious humanitarian crisis underway in the Gaza Strip.
This issue was also discussed at the Federal Government level and is causing tension among the various parties in the coalition.
While the Jette municipal council meeting is one of the few in the Brussels-Capital Region not to be broadcast live online, a video shared on social media by Leila Agic shows the incidents and the comments by MR-Open VLD's Corhay, who compared the Palestinian flag to that of a "terrorist movement."
"It is scandalous, you cannot say that the Palestinian flag is that of a terrorist movement," said Agic, emphasising the severity of the situation in Gaza. Corhay, however, was offended at being interrupted and told Agic to keep quiet. "You were not given the floor. [...] You are like the terrorists."
Agic then asked the council president to record the incident in the minutes of the meeting, before Corhay clarified that he had said that she was acting like the terrorists by interrupting him during his speech.
"I find there is a lack of respect in this assembly and that I have never experienced such outbursts," said Jette Mayor Claire Vandevivere (Les Engagés), who leads a majority with the MR, Open VLD, and Ecolo-Groen. "I ask everyone to calm down."
It was at this point that the municipal councilors from PS, PTB and Team Fouad Ahidar decided to leave the municipal council.
Team Fouad's Widad Temsamani described Corhay's remarks as "deeply shocking," and stressed that the Palestinian people are "not Hamas."
"Making this conflation amounts to spitting on the thousands of innocent civilians who are victims of a state bent on revenge. Just as we do not conflate far-right Israeli leaders with the Jewish people," Temsamani said.
Meanwhile, PTB's Jan Busselen described these as "unacceptable statements," adding that "we cannot accept that an elected official is compared to a terrorist just because she was outraged by certain statements."
