However the announcement by the town, a well-liked vacationer vacation spot and residential to one of many world’s best-known soccer golf equipment, carries vital symbolism and provides to a rising listing of critics which have labeled Israel an apartheid state. Israel rejects such accusations as delegitimizing and antisemitic and referred to as the choice “unfortunate.”
In a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Colau stated the step got here in response to a marketing campaign by dozens of native teams and hundreds of activists.
She cited quite a few Israeli insurance policies, together with its 55-year army occupation of the West Financial institution, its annexation of east Jerusalem and its development of settlements on lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
“As mayor of Barcelona, a Mediterranean city and defender of human rights, I cannot be indifferent to the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population,” she wrote. “It would be a severe mistake to apply a policy of double standards and turn a blind eye to a violation that has been, for decades, widely verified and documented by international organizations.”
In recent times, three well-known human rights teams – Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Israel’s B’Tselem – have accused Israel of apartheid, each contained in the nation in addition to within the occupied territories.
Amnesty and the opposite teams say the very fragmentation of the territories wherein Palestinians stay is a part of an general regime of management designed to take care of Jewish hegemony from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
They level to discriminatory policies inside Israel and in annexed east Jerusalem, Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been dominated by the Hamas militant group since 2007, and its continued management of the West Financial institution and development of Jewish settlements that a lot of the worldwide group considers unlawful. The election of Israel’s new hard-line authorities, dominated by ultranationalists against Palestinian independence, has added to those issues.
The Palestinians search the West Financial institution, east Jerusalem and Gaza, areas captured by Israel in 1967, for a future unbiased state.
Israel says its personal Arab residents, who make up about 20% of the inhabitants, take pleasure in equal rights, together with the appropriate to vote, and have reached the higher echelons of enterprise, leisure, regulation and leisure. It considers the West Financial institution to be disputed territory whose standing must be resolved by means of negotiations and says it it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, two years earlier than Hamas seized management.
Israel’s International Ministry referred to as Barcelona’s determination “unfortunate” and claimed it went in opposition to the needs of the vast majority of the town’s inhabitants.
“The decision gives support to extremists, terrorist organizations and antisemitism,” it stated. “The friendship between Israel and Barcelona is long-standing, and is based on shared culture and values. Even this unfortunate decision will not damage this friendship.”
The grassroots Palestinian-led motion selling a boycott of Israel welcomed Barcelona’s determination. Alys Samson, an activist with the “Stop Complicity with Israel” coalition in Barcelona, stated the group had gathered virtually 5,000 signatures for its marketing campaign.
“We are very happy,” she stated. “We hope many more governments and institutions will follow suit.”
In the meantime, the mayor of Barcelona’s arch rival Madrid instantly provided to take up the twinning settlement with Tel Aviv, as each he and Colau jostle for place on worldwide points and funding in an election 12 months.
José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the Spanish capital’s conservative mayor, accused Barcelona’s chief of antisemitism and tweeted that he had written to Tel Aviv’s mayor to share “Madrid’s commitment to democracy and freedom.”
“It would be an honor to be twinned with Tel Aviv,” he added. Spain’s right-wing politicians are more and more making diplomatic and business outreach to Israel.
Spain’s two largest cities are consistently at odds on every part from politics to soccer. Colau, distrusted by the Catalan pro-independence motion, is a number one left-wing politician who’s dealing with a troublesome election in Might.
Federman reported from Jerusalem.
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