UK councils twinned with Israeli towns and cities stand by municipal ties
Several UK local authorities are continuing to maintain controversial sister city relationships with towns and cities in Israel even as campaigners they called on them to cut ties with the country over its conduct of the war on Gaza.
The port cities of Newcastle and Portsmouth both have twinning arrangements with the port of Haifa in Israel’s north, while the south coast town of Bournemouth is twinned with the Israeli resort of Netanya.
In London, the borough of Hackney is also twinned with Haifa, while Barnet is twinned with the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.
Just north of London, the borough of Elstree and Borehamwood in Hertfordshire is twinned with the central Israeli town of Shoham.
A sister city or twinning agreement is a long-term relationship between two communities in different countries, aimed at fostering international friendship, cultural exchange and sometimes mutual economic benefit.
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But a number of councils have faced calls to end the relationships amid growing outrage prompted by Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza in which more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed and Israeli leaders face accusations of genocide and war crimes in international courts.
In July, a Green Party councillor in Bournemouth tabled a motion calling for the town to “de-twin” from Netanya in order to protect its reputation.
Joe Salmon, the councillor, said: “When the actions and policies of a sister town’s nation contradict these values, it becomes imperative to reconsider and potentially sever such ties.”
The motion prompted demonstrations and counter-demonstrations by pro-Palestine and pro-Israel activists outside Bournemouth’s council offices.
'Hackney says it’s an "anti-racist council", but there’s nothing anti-racist about being twinned with a city built on ethnic cleansing'
- Matt Rowland Hill, Palestine Solidarity Campaign Hackney
But the motion was not discussed or voted on after council officers determined that the twinning relationship fell outside of the council’s remit.
Earlier this year, a gateway sign marking Bournemouth’s relationship with Netanya was surreptitiously removed without the council’s permission. It has since been replaced.
The incident was condemned at the time by Tobias Ellwood, then the local Conservative MP, who said: “The deep bond between our two seaside towns is strong and will not be affected by what seems an act of antisemitic vandalism.”
In Hackney, campaigners who staged a weeks-long encampment outside the town hall also called for an end to the council’s twinning relationship with Haifa, as well for the divestment of Hackney’s pension fund from firms alleged to supply weapons to the Israeli army.
They called for an end to a partnership between hospitals in Hackney and Haifa, accusing Israeli forces of having “annihilated Gaza's healthcare system and executed doctors and nurses”.
Matt Rowland Hill of Hackney’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “Hackney says it’s an 'anti-racist council', but there’s nothing anti-racist about being twinned with a city built on ethnic cleansing and whose Palestinian residents are second-class citizens in their own homeland.
"Hackney has to live up to its values and listen to the voices of its residents. Twinning with Haifa must end – now."
A Hackney Council spokesperson said: “The relationship with Haifa in Israel is a civic one dating back to 1968. As with all of Hackney’s twinning relationships, it is non-political, non-sectarian and multi-faith.
"The council does not have an active role in managing the links; they are self-sustaining based on the community connections that have built up over many years."
'Universal values'
While many of these UK-Israel relationships date back several decades, others are the result of more recent initiatives: Elstree and Borehamwood, which is home to one of the UK's largest Jewish communities, only signed its twinning agreement with Shoham in 2023.
Under the terms of the agreement, the mayors of the two towns pledged "to promote the universal values of liberty, democracy, equality and rule of law through our exchanges and cooperation".
The twinning relationship kicked off with a week-long visit by youth football team Maccabi Shoham culminating with a friendly match attended by about 500 people at Boreham Wood Football Club last July.
Elstree and Borehamwood Council flew an Israeli flag alongside a British flag outside the council offices for several weeks following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October.
But the flag was taken down by the council in early November after it had been defaced with red paint. The council reported the incident to the police and the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism. Hertfordshire Police said that "all lines of enquiry were exhausted, but no suspects were identified".
Council leader Richard Butler told the BBC the council was aware of "the concerns people have with what is going on in Israel and the Gaza Strip" and the "tensions around that".
But he said the council also wanted to "show unity to our twin town".
"We are a council that is open to everyone, but I think we need to be very clear at this point in time - what happened on 7 October was a terrorist act and we will stand by our twin town," said Butler.
In February, the council updated gateway signs celebrating the area's heritage as a home to film and television studios to include Shoham alongside other twin towns in France and Germany.
Elstree and Borehamwood Council did not respond to requests for comment.
'Building bridges'
For other twinned locations, it is less clear what the relationship entails: Newcastle Council, which is twinned with Haifa, states that while its relationship led to “activity in the 1980s and 90s", today “there is currently little contact between the two cities.”
The council describes Haifa, which lost 95 percent of its Palestinian citizens in 1948 during the Nakba, as a city where the “population is a mix of Jews and Arabs with a reputation for good relations between the two communities.”
Newcastle City Council did not respond to requests for comment.
Portsmouth City Council has more information about its own partnership with Haifa, which includes a link between colleges in each city, encouraging links between organisations and individuals with similar interests, and arranging visits between the two cities.
A Portsmouth City Council spokesperson said the council had called for an end to the conflict in Gaza and Israel and was seeking to build a similar relationship with a Palestinian city.
“Twinning and sister relationships are an internationally proven way of building bridges between people across different countries,” the spokesperson said.
“We have no plans to change this relationship going forward."
While a number of councils have said that twinning relationships are outside of their remit, there is a precedent for the termination of sister city relationships in the UK.
In 2022, a motion proposed by local Liberal Democrat councillor Wendy Taylor led Newcastle to end its twinning agreement with the Chinese city of Taiyuan over accusations of China’s detention of Uyghur Muslims in re-education camps.
International precedents for breaking local ties with Israel over its treatment of Palestinians also exist.
In February 2023, the Spanish city of Barcelona terminated its 25-year-old twin city agreement with Tel Aviv, with then-mayor Ada Colau accusing Israel of committing “the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people”.
In September, following the election of a new mayor, Jaume Collboni, the decision was reversed. Collboni described Tel Aviv as representing "the best of Israel’s progressive values”. Critics tied the move to legal challenges against the mayoralty launched by pro-Israel lobbyists.
In November, Barcelona's city council voted to suspend institutional ties with the current Israeli government, calling for a ceasefire that guaranteed the fundamental rights of Palestinians and compliance with United Nations resolutions.
But the Catalan News Agency reported that the suspension of ties with the government did not cover relations between Barcelona and the city of Tel Aviv.
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