Pro-Palestinian activism in Brussels

Blog post by Dounia Largo, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Introduction
Since October 2023, Brussels has become one of the main centres of pro-Palestinian mobilisation in Europe. On a daily basis, people have gathered in public spaces to express solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide, occupation, apartheid, and forced displacement imposed by the Israeli state. These mobilisations have taken many forms, including static gatherings, mass demonstrations, direct actions, boycotts, and protests organised without official authorisation.

At first glance, Brussels presents itself as a city that welcomes protest. Its political leaders regularly portray it as a space of democratic openness, freedom of expression, and tolerance. Yet the treatment of pro-Palestinian mobilisation reveals a different reality: when political demands challenge dominant geopolitical interests and racialised ideas of belonging, tolerance quickly becomes conditional.

This article argues that repression in Brussels does not simply aim to maintain public order. Rather, it shapes who is allowed to appear as a legitimate political subject in public space. Through legal ambiguity, selective policing, media framing, and spatial displacement, authorities create a political environment in which Palestinian and racialised activists are visible but rarely recognised – allowed to be present, yet constantly under threat. By focusing on space – where protests take place, how they are policed, and how they are represented – this article situates Brussels within broader European dynamics: the criminalisation of decolonial dissent, the management of racialised bodies, and the preservation of democratic appearances through exclusion rather than outright bans. At the same time, it highlights how activists continue to resist and adapt under increasingly hostile conditions.
 
Researching contested political spaces
This analysis is based on two and a half years of qualitative fieldwork carried out in Brussels between October 2023 and December 2025.
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It combines participant and non-participant observation at pro-Palestinian protests, interviews with activists, media analysis, and informal conversations with people involved in the movement. Rather than treating public space as neutral, this approach examines how space is shaped by power. It focuses on everyday experiences of protest: encounters with police, fear and exhaustion, moments of solidarity, and strategies developed to cope with repression. This makes it possible to understand repression not only as a top-down process, but as something lived and negotiated on the ground.

Tolerated but not recognised: legal ambiguity as a tool of control
One of the most striking aspects of the daily gatherings in Brussels was their unclear legal status. They were neither officially authorised nor formally banned but described as “tolerated”.

While tolerance may sound generous, in practice it produces constant insecurity. Protesters are allowed to occupy public space without any guarantee of protection. What is tolerated today can be repressed tomorrow. This uncertainty creates a permanent sense of vulnerability, shaping how people behave, where they stand, and how they interact with police.

This ambiguity is not accidental. Authorities regularly present Brussels as a city of protest, highlighting the number of authorised demonstrations to maintain an image of democratic openness. At the same time, by refusing to formally authorise pro-Palestinian gatherings, they retain maximum discretion. Rather than banning protest outright, they organise its fragility.

Anticipatory policing and racialised suspicion
Policing around pro-Palestinian gatherings follows a logic of anticipation rather than reaction. Young Palestinian men were disproportionately targeted for identity checks, surveillance, intimidation, and arrest. These interventions were rarely based on concrete actions. In consulted legal documents, arrests were most of the time justified by the “risk” of disturbance rather than actual events. Individuals were treated as dangerous not for what they did, but for what they might do.

This form of policing relies on racialised and gendered stereotypes. Certain bodies are read as suspicious by default. Being young, Arab, male, and politically active is often enough to attract police attention, resulting in uneven policing across the crowd. For those targeted, these encounters were deeply humiliating. Repeated stops communicated a clear message: your presence here is provisional. Even when policing occurred in public, its legitimacy was rarely questioned, while the legitimacy of those controlled was constantly doubted. Through these practices, public space itself became racialised.

Media framing and the limits of legitimacy
Public perception of the protests was also shaped by media coverage. Belgian mainstream media overwhelmingly prioritised the voices of right- or far-right politicians, police representatives, and business owners. Activists were rarely quoted at length or treated as legitimate political actors.

When protests were covered, they were often framed as disruptive or threatening. Articles frequently associated the gatherings with unrelated terms such as “Hamas attack”, creating fear even when no connection existed. Images focused on moments of tension, often isolating young Arab men from the wider crowd.

These choices reinforced stereotypes and helped justify heavy policing. Women, families, and white participants were largely absent from coverage, reducing the movement to a narrow, racialised image. Media representation, policing, and political legitimacy thus reinforced one another.

Visibility, displacement and control
Initially, gatherings took place at the Bourse, a highly visible and symbolic public space. Visibility functioned as a form of protection: being seen constrained police violence and allowed protesters to address a wider public.

Over time, authorities deliberately dismantled this visibility by relocating gatherings to Brussels Central Station, a space of transit rather than assembly. This reduced public exposure and made protest easier to control. The decision reflected a clear political choice: to allow protest, but out of sight.

The contrast with other groups is striking. Far-right football hooligans, often openly racist and violent, regularly escape serious consequences despite breaking laws. Meanwhile, Palestinian youth who organise peaceful gatherings remain under constant suspicion.

This asymmetry raises a fundamental question: who is considered a legitimate inhabitant of the city? In practice, whiteness operates as a shield of legitimacy, while racialised people are treated as suspect even when they fully comply with the rules.

From deterrence to destruction
From September 2025 onwards, repression intensified. Police began intercepting protesters away from gathering points, using unmarked vehicles and officers in plain clothes. Within two months, thirteen Palestinian activists were arrested using methods reminiscent of those employed by ICE in the United States. Many were placed in closed detention centres and/or deported to Greece.

One of them, Mahmoud Farjallah, a 26-year-old Palestinian man, died by suicide in the 127 bis detention centre on 7 October 2025. His death cannot be separated from the broader system that produced it. It was the result of a long chain of practices: legal uncertainty, targeted policing, detention, and institutional neglect.

Mahmoud’s death marks the extreme end of a continuum of violence that begins in public space and extends into administrative detention. After his death, arrests stopped, suggesting that institutions recognised they had reached a political limit.

Yet no official statement followed. Responsibility was denied, reduced to the language of a “human tragedy”, erasing the political and administrative decisions that made this death possible.

This pause should not be mistaken for an end to state violence. It marked a recalibration rather than a rupture. Since then, two new deportation centres have begun construction, signalling not restraint but reorganisation. Repression mutates, shifts form, and adapts. And so does resistance.
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Conclusion
The management of pro-Palestinian protest in Brussels shows that tolerance is not the opposite of repression, but one of its most effective tools. By tolerating without recognising, authorities preserve democratic appearances while keeping dissent fragile and controllable.

What is at stake is not only protest regulation, but political legitimacy itself. Who is allowed to speak? Who is protected? The answer depends not only on democratic principles, but on race, citizenship, and perceived belonging. Repression did not silence the movement; it reshaped it. As fear increased, many white and legally secure participants withdrew. Those who remained were primarily young Palestinians, for whom protest became an act of dignity and refusal. In Brussels, the struggle over Palestine became a struggle over space, violence, and survival – revealing that Europe’s colonial present is not past, but actively governing political dissent.

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Image credit: Nikolaj Habib on Unsplash

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