JERUSALEM—Belgian and Luxembourg officials summoned Israeli Ambassador Simona Frenkel Wednesday for “clarifications” about Israel’s behavior during Monday’s Hamas-fueled riots on the Gaza-Israel border and to protest what Brussels had called a “disproportionate” use of force by IDF soldiers.
But whereas representatives of the countries’ had planned on reprimanding Frenkel, they reportedly found themselves on the receiving end of a stiff rebuke by Frenkel.
“Your one-sided positions do not contribute to peace,” she told the Deputy Director of the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Anick Van Calster, according to the Hebrew-language news site Ynet.
Van Calster said she objected to Frenkels’ characterization of the Gaza victims during an interview on a Belgian radio show as “terrorists,” and called on Israel to “act in accordance with the international law on the use of force and the protection of human life.
“We will support the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry, and we call on all parties to make efforts to bring peace to the region,” Van Calster said.
Frankel wasted little time returning fire, breaking with normative diplomatic protocol which calls for a visiting ambassador to remain silent during a diplomatic reprimand and rejecting the notion of an international commission of inquiry out of hand.
“There has never been an independent investigation when it comes to Israeli affairs,” she said. “And Belgium is the last country that can claim the commission of inquiry would be independent. Prime Minister Charles Michel has already argued that Israel should be punished, so you have already come to your conclusions,” she said.
Frenkel added that news reports of a Gazan baby killed by Israeli forces during the protests were untrue.
“Even the journalists in Gaza said that the baby may have already been dying beforehand and was deliberately brought to the fence,” Frenkel noted.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon declined a TPS request for an interview with Ambassador Frenkel but confirmed that the Ynet report was “entirely correct.”