Barcelona freezes ties with Tel Aviv over Israeli apartheid practices

Barcelona City Council yesterday issued a decree for the “temporary suspension” of relations with Israel as well as all of its institutions, including its twinning with the city of Tel Aviv, in protest against Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians.

Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, said she had sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informing him of the decision to temporarily suspend relations with Israel, as well as the reasons behind this decision.

Colau explained: “More than 100 organisations and over 4,000 citizens have demanded that we defend the human rights of Palestinians and for this reason, as mayor, I have written to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to inform him that I have temporarily suspended the institutional relationship between Barcelona and Tel Aviv.”

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The mayor considered the decision necessary to advance peace, and recalled that the municipality had suspended relations with the Russian city of St. Petersburg following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ada added that the decision is not directed against Jewish citizens, but rather against the policies of the Israeli government that subjects Palestinians to apartheid.

Barcelona had signed a twinning agreement with Tel Aviv and Gaza City in 1998, following the Oslo Accords and the Barcelona series that turned into the Mediterranean Union, in which Barcelona played a role in the rapprochement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

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