The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, announced this Wednesday the temporary suspension of all relations with the state of Israel, including the twinning agreement with the city of Tel Aviv. The mayor herself sent a letter to the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, in which she informs him of the decision. Colau defended this decision by criticizing the "flagrant and systematic violation of human rights". "We understand that we cannot remain silent", insisted the mayor while pointing out that the decision is "in no way a discrimination against the Jewish population, it is a criticism of a government, not a people, a community, or a religion" .
This decision comes as a response to the campaign promoted by the collective Prou Complicitat through its campaign, Barcelona with apartheid, no, which initially asked for the proposal to break the twin cities relationship to be put to the city council plenary. Now, Colau has skipped this request, formulated by the promoters themselves, and has decide the suspension herself by mayoral decree, which will prevent the issue from being discussed in the regular council meeting. However, the Socialists (PSC), Colau's partners in the city government, have already announced, just minutes after learning of the mayor's decision, that they will bring the issue to the February council meeting with a proposal to recover the twinning, so that if they have enough support, the suspension could be quashed in just over a fortnight.
Colau's reasons
In the letter that Colau has addressed to Netanyahu, the Barcelona mayor states that international organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli association B'Tselem have "denounced that the practices of the state of Israel against the Palestinian population could constitute crimes against humanity, of apartheid and persecution”. Likewise, she recalls that the Parliament of Catalonia passed a resolution that classified "the practices of the Israeli occupation as 'equivalent to apartheid'". For this reason, Colau affirms that she cannot remain "impassive in the face of the systematic violation of the basic rights of the Palestinian population", because it would be "a serious mistake to apply a policy of unequal treatment and close our eyes to a violation that has been widely verified and documented by international organizations for decades".
"For all these reasons" - the letter continues - "I am letting you know that I have decided to temporarily suspend relations with the state of Israel and with the official institutions of that state, including the twinning agreements with the city council of Tel Aviv, until the Israeli authorities put an end to the systematic violation of human rights against the Palestinian population and fully comply with the obligations imposed on them by international law and the various resolutions of the United Nations". The letter clarifies that the measure affects "solely and exclusively the institutional relations of the mayoralty of Barcelona with Israel and the rest of its official institutions, and under no circumstance does it affect its citizenry".
Below, the full letter in Catalan sent by mayor Colau to prime minister Netanyahu.