The Mayor of Barcelona announced that all institutional relations with Israeli apartheid, including the Catalan capital’s twinning with Tel Aviv, will be suspended.

The twinning agreement between Barcelona and Tel Aviv had been in place since 1998.

In a letter to Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Barcelona Mayor Mayor Ada Colau stated: “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. 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 organisations.”

In the letter, Colau specifically noted that this action comes in response to an official petition by 100 social organizations and thousands of residents under the slogan “Barcelona says NO to Apartheid, Barcelona says YES to human rights.”

She emphasized the widespread support by human rights organizations for considering the Israeli regime to be an apartheid state, as well as a June 2022 Catalonian Parliament resolution.

Supporters of Palestine have welcomed the announcement as a clear and resounding victory for justice in Palestine, saying the Israeli state is a settler-colonial, racist project that has oppressed the Palestinian people and dispossessed them of their land for the past 75 years, with the full complicity of imperialist powers internationally.

In Europe and other countries “twinning” or “sistership” with Israeli cities has been a common route to promote Zionist propaganda and normalization at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Human rights groups consider “Twinning” relationships of this type a form of complicity in the Israeli occupation regime, its war crimes, crimes against humanity and the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people.