London council set to cut Haifa ties over Israel's apartheid against Palestinians

A Green-led London council in the UK is set to end the borough of Hackney’s 56-year twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Haifa over Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians.

Following a campaign and protests by thousands in the last few years, councillors will finally vote on the proposal on Tuesday, fulfilling a Green Party election promise to sever relations with Haifa.

The party took control of the north London council in May and holds 42 of its 57 seats, making the measure almost certain to pass.

Palestine solidarity groups have spent years pressing Hackney’s previous Labour administration to terminate the partnership, established in 1968. Pressure intensified after Israel began its genocide in Gaza in October 2023.

Campaigners have also demanded that the council divest its pension fund from companies connected to Israel’s military and occupation.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said continued civic relations normalised the “racist domination” imposed on Palestinians.

It also highlighted Haifa’s role as the global headquarters of Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer and a major supplier to its military.

Israel has imposed an apartheid system on Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. Palestinian citizens of Israel also face institutionalised discrimination in land allocation, planning, municipal funding and civil rights.

Ethnic cleansing in the 'city of coexistence'

Supporters of the twinning cite Haifa’s Palestinian population - around 33,000 people, or 12 percent of the city - as evidence of coexistence.

However, Haifa was home to more than 70,000 Palestinians before Zionist forces ethnically cleansed the city of most of its Palestinian population in 1948.

Haifa witnessed one of the “biggest incidents of ethnic cleansing” during the Nakba, Sussan Rassoulie, a long-standing member of the Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told Middle East Eye.

'It's absolutely abhorrent for a local authority who claims to have some kind of ethics to be twinned with an Israeli city'

- Sussan Rassoulie, Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign member

“We have lots of stories and documents about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, the Nakba, and exactly what happened in Haifa in particular.” 

“It's absolutely abhorrent for a local authority who claims to have some kind of ethics to be twinned with an Israeli city,” she said, adding that Haifa is “an important military port for Israel. It's the site where most of the weaponry in the last three years have been arriving in Israel”.

“On the other hand, we would very much like to have a connection with the occupied Palestinian city Silwan. We've had several visits from women and young people from East Jerusalem to Hackney over the last few years. We would love to have a connection with them,” Rassoulie said, "but not while Hackney remains twinned with Haifa".

Explaining its commitment to ending the partnership, the Hackney Greens wrote: “Des­pite repeated, mass com­munity calls for de-twin­ning, the Labour-led coun­cil has con­sist­ently refused to cut ties with the Israeli city of Haifa under the twin­ning scheme.

“In Haifa, Palestinian people live under occu­pa­tion and apartheid by the Israeli state; this is not a city that reflects Hack­ney’s val­ues. Hack­ney’s cur­rent and future twin­ning rela­tion­ships should reflect our val­ues, rather than under­mine them,” it added.

Labour councillor Michael Desmond previously described demands to end the arrangement as an “appalling, abus­ive tirade”. Desmond, an avowed Zionist, has called Israel an “inclusive” country.

Pro-Israel Labour MP Luke Akehurst, who spent 12 years as a Hackney councillor, said he was “dis­gus­ted” by the Greens’ “per­form­at­ive and spite­ful ges­ture polit­ics”.

Akehurst previously directed We Believe in Israel and has defended Israel’s war on Gaza as proportionate.