Belgium

Brussels, October 7, 2026. The Belgian press is marking the third anniversary of the Hamas attack with solemnity. La Libre Belgique and the DH, citing AFP, report that a minute of silence was observed at 06:29, the time the assault began, at the site of the Nova festival, where the attack killed over 300 people, and then at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where 64 residents were killed and 18 taken hostage. The DH notes a death toll of 1,221 according to an AFP count, 251 people taken hostage including 44 who have since died, and points out that these commemorations are the first since the ceasefire took effect in Gaza. The official ceremonies, it specifies, were held on Monday, on a date set by the Israeli government.

The Flemish newspaper VRT NWS is focusing on the trauma: "There is trauma, a deep and not to be underestimated trauma," it writes, and it evokes the anger over still not having a commission of inquiry. It gives a voice to Emily Hand, 11, who was a hostage at the age of 8 for 50 days, and to Yaakov Godo, the father of Tom, who was killed on October 7. The Israelis, it says, are now looking at their leaders and the end-of-month elections in a different light.

La Libre Belgique is pushing the analysis towards responsibility. Its October 7 article recalls that Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, on Sunday, October 4, spoke of "the magnitude of the disaster" and the need not to get bogged down in military investigations. The newspaper lists the series of resignations, from Aharon Haliva, head of Aman, in April 2024, to Herzi Halevi, Yossi Sariel, Yaron Finkelman, and Oded Basiuk, and reads the security failure through the mistrust between Benjamin Netanyahu and the army, which also serves as a scapegoat for the government.

A Palestinian voice is expressed in the opinion columns of La Libre. Izzeldin Abuelaish, an honorary doctor of the UCLouvain, condemns the murder of any innocent person, Israeli or Palestinian, and asks: "How many more must die before we say enough?" He emphasizes that over 74,000 deaths have been recorded in Gaza and that October 7 "did not occur in a historical vacuum," referring to the occupation and the blockade.

Belgian sources thus converge on one point: the date is being experienced in Israel as a moment of mourning, but also as a moment of reckoning, three weeks before an election that the DH describes as marked by the memory of October 7, 2023.