Belgium’s interior minister, Bernard Quintin, plans to end the routine deployment of federal police officers in Antwerp’s Jewish district from January, returning 16 officers to their posts in Brussels and shifting responsibility back to local policing.
The move has triggered objections from Antwerp’s city leadership and fresh concern within the Jewish community about a potential gap in protection.
The decision comes days after senior Belgian politicians attended a Hanukkah event in Antwerp at which assurances were given that the city’s Jewish community would continue to receive visible security support. Those pledges followed a mass shooting at a Hanukkah gathering near Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday 14th December, which Australian authorities have treated as a terrorist attack and which left 15 people dead, according to police and court charging documents.
Els van Doesburg, Antwerp’s acting mayor, said she was informed of the federal withdrawal and described the decision, in television remarks reported by Belgian media, as “incomprehensible”. She said the city could not allow a security vacuum to emerge, particularly in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack.
Quintin’s cabinet has said that protecting Jewish sites remains a priority, but argued that the presence of a federal reserve is not intended as a permanent structural measure for Antwerp. It pointed to the size of the Antwerp police force and stressed that local police should maintain security arrangements on the ground.
Antwerp has for years operated a mixed model in which local and federal police share duties linked to the protection of Jewish sites. Belgian media have reported that the balance has been close to even, meaning the withdrawal of 16 federal officers would require the city to increase local capacity to keep coverage at the same level.
The interior minister’s cabinet has promoted an alternative: deploying military personnel to sites linked to the Jewish community in Antwerp to support local police and free up capacity. According to reporting in Belgium, Quintin has discussed the proposal with the defence minister, Theo Francken, but government-wide agreement has not been reached.
The delay reflects wider coalition tensions over the use of soldiers for domestic security tasks. Belgian outlets have linked the stand-off to objections from CD&V, which has publicly tied any approval for deploying troops on streets to measures addressing prison overcrowding.
In Brussels, where discussions over military deployments have also been under way, Theo Francken said earlier this month that no agreement had yet been reached in the federal government on putting soldiers on the streets, underlining the political sensitivity of the question across multiple cities.
Jewish community representatives in Antwerp say the timing and manner of the planned withdrawal have increased anxiety. Ralph Pais, vice-chair of the Jewish Information and Documentation Centre (JID), told Belgian media that the announcement came as a surprise and that community members were discussing little else. He said there was a strong expectation that authorities would find a solution, but warned that a failure to maintain adequate security could create serious problems.
Security planning for Jewish sites in Belgium has been shaped by a long-standing threat assessment environment. After the fatal attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014, protection levels were strengthened and Belgium’s threat assessment bodies raised attention to risks around Jewish interests. Belgian reporting has consistently referred to an elevated threat level for Jewish interests since that period.
The current dispute leaves Antwerp facing immediate operational questions ahead of 1 January. Van Doesburg’s office has urged that the federal officers remain in place until an agreed replacement is operational, whether through additional local staffing or the deployment of military support.
Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who previously served as Antwerp’s mayor and is now head of the federal government, attended the Hanukkah event in the city alongside Van Doesburg. The Belgian government’s official portals list Quintin as minister for security and the interior and Francken as defence minister, placing the security decision inside a politically sensitive intersection of federal policing, local responsibility and coalition bargaining.
For Antwerp’s Jewish community, the issue is less institutional than practical: whether uniformed protection remains continuous and predictable at schools, synagogues and communal sites during a period in which authorities across Europe have been tightening security around Jewish targets following attacks abroad.
Main Image: Hoffy’s Restaurant, Antwerp.
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