With a hearing scheduled next week to determine the fate of claims submitted by Sabra and Chatila survivors against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and three other Israelis, newspapers in Brussels are devoting lavish coverage to rising tensions between the two countries.

In Belgium, Israeli officials are trying to forestall repeat broadcasts of a controversial BBC program on the 1982 massacres in Lebanon.

Yesterday the newspaper Le Soir disclosed that Belgium´s Ambassador in Israel, Wilfried Geens, delayed submission of the summons for Sharon to appear at the hearing until a European Union delegation led by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhosftadt and Foreign Minister Louis Michel completed its visit to Israel.

Belgian media reported that though the summons for Sharon, and also one for Amos Yaron (currently the Defense Ministry´s director- general), made their way to Israel in Verhosftadt´s plane, Ambassador Geens managed to persuade his superiors to keep the summons on hold until the EU delegation ended its visit. The envoy argued a deferral was necessary to avoid "a serious diplomatic incident" that might further aggravate relations between the two countries.

Israeli officials are not infuriated by the summons itself. Claims about alleged war crimes at Sabra and Chatila are directed against Sharon and the other Israelis (Yaron, Amir Drori and Rafael Eitan) personally; and so the three men are to be summoned as part of usual legal procedure. Israel´s consternation stems from the Belgian decision to deliver the summons to Sharon directly, using the Belgian ambassador as courier - "a totally unnecessary drama," one senior Israeli official said yesterday.

Sharon, officials in Israel´s Embassy in Brussels explain, is being represented by a local attorney, and his counsel´s Brussels office ought to have been used as the address for a summons of this sort. Legal authorities confirm that normal procedure would have been to send the summons to Sharon´s attorney in Brussels, rather than using the Belgian ambassador in Tel Aviv as a conduit.

Moreover, the hearing next week is a low-level proceeding which requires neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants to attend - both sides are to be represented by their attorneys. This being the case, why did the Belgians "act in such an absurd manner," conveying the letter directly to Sharon, wondered a top Israeli official.

Still recoiling from the recent broadcast of the BBC program "The Accused" by Belgium´s state, French-language, station RTBF, Israeli officials are trying to stop a planned broadcast of the Sabra and Chatila documentary on Belgium´s Flemish-language channel. BBC´s Panorama investigative report about the massacres is slated for broadcast on the station next Sunday, three days before the hearing in Brussels on the war crimes allegations against Sharon. Israeli officials insist that showings of the BBC program in Belgium reflect an "inflamed atmosphere" hostile to Israel and to Prime Minister Sharon.

Israel´s Embassy in Belgium issued an official statement expressing "revulsion" about the program itself, and also critizing the Belgian decision to broadcast it. The statement categorized the broadcast decision as an "insufferable attempt to intervene in a legal proceeding." (© Copyright 2001 Ha´aretz 11/20/01)