The Tweet You Missed: Belgium’s Message is Silence

On the second anniversary of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel, Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs marked the date with a forty-word image tweet on X, a masterclass in precision, omission, and digital diplomacy.

Belgium commemorates the 7 October 2023 terrorist attack ⤵ pic.twitter.com/UW2saDgJbl

— Belgium MFA (@BelgiumMFA) October 7, 2025

This tweet is terse, visually packaged, and striking both for what it says and, perhaps more tellingly, for what it leaves out.

On social media, diplomacy functions as a compressed performance. A single branded image, complete with the Ministry logo, anniversary date, and a block of text, must do many jobs at once, including expressing sympathy, registering a normative stance, signalling support for mediators, and reaching multiple domestic and foreign publics in one go. Belgium’s tweet ticks those boxes well, with condolences, endorsement of the Sharm el-Sheikh talks, a call for hostage release, an appeal for a ceasefire, and an invocation of the two-state solution. It’s economical and, by design, multiplexed.

However, the first anomaly is clear. The tweet never names actors. It refers to “the terrorist attack”, but not to Hamas, Israel, or Gaza. This is a deliberate diplomatic choice. Naming identifies and aligns. Omission buys ambiguity. A planned ambiguity allows a government to express moral condemnation while keeping diplomatic channels open. The ambiguity is the message itself, as one that expresses a mourn, but also calibrating politics.

Belgium’s caution is consistent with its broader foreign-policy style, preferring multilateral, legally minded, and consensus-driven within the EU framework. It is also a reflection of the political moment. Since announcing in September 2025 its intention to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly, Belgium has been walking a careful line between advocacy of Palestinian sovereignty and the need to condemn terrorism and support hostage diplomacy.

The post’s structure performs another classic diplomatic maneuver, with the pivot from grief to policy. Linking commemoration to the Sharm el-Sheikh negotiations reframes mourning into pragmatic engagement. Sympathy becomes a legitimating preface to action. Yet, that reference to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh talks, which have drawn mediators from Egypt, Qatar, the U.S., and the EU, aligns Belgium with the ongoing diplomatic process and the brokers managing it. Participation and visible support matter almost as much as outcomes. Publicly endorsing negotiations signals both moral seriousness and policy relevance. Thus, Belgium is another state watching in the crowd but contributing.

There is also a medium effect at play. The statement is embedded in a graphic, not simply typed into a tweet. That matters, since visuals on X (and similar platforms) become artifacts, easily shared, difficult to alter, and often archived by journalists, activists, and domestic critics. Notably, Ministries treat these images as official documents rather than ephemeral posts.

From an international relations perspective, this is public diplomacy in action. Classic soft power, in political scientist Joseph Nye’s sense, depends on attraction, credibility, and legitimacy. Nowadays, in digital life, those qualities are condensed into micro-statements aimed to resonate across audiences, including foreign publics, peers, allies, adversaries, and domestic voters. A condolence message that endorses negotiations and reaffirms a two-state framework does more than mark an anniversary. It positions Belgium within the moral and political vocabulary of the moment. It says, in effect, ‘we grieve, but we also work toward political resolution’. In 280 characters, Ministries now try to mint credibility, treating it as the currency of influence, in real time.

It is worth observing whether Belgium’s phrasing becomes a template. Other European Foreign Ministries, notably those in Ireland, Spain, and the Nordics, have experimented with similarly calibrated messaging of commemoration combined with conditional support for negotiations and a two-state goal. If this pattern spreads, it could signify an emerging European approach to digital crisis communication, one that emphasises empathy, mediation, and political framing rather than direct attribution.

Belgium’s anniversary post is easy to scroll past. But read closely, it reveals the behind-the-scenes of digital diplomacy. Each omission is not an absence but an intention. Ambiguity itself becomes a diplomatic resource in such a media environment. To speak carefully is to stay in play. In that sense, Belgium’s forty-word message is indeed a foreign policy, conducted, quite literally, in public.