Edinburgh City Council formally announced on 23 March that it will discuss a petition calling for the twinning of Gaza with Edinburgh. The discussion will take place at 10:00am on 29 March (see Item 7.8 on the committee’s agenda). 

The council has also published additional details as a supplement to the upcoming discussion on the twinning. You can view the background to Item 7.8 here. A live webcast of the 29 March meeting can be watched here.

A rally coinciding with the council meeting on 23 March was held outside the City Chambers on Edinburgh’s High Street. In the 36-minute video below, you can see the twinning petition author Pete Gregson explaining why the petition was launched. You can also see Mohammed Al-Shorafa giving a sense of life in Gaza (look out for the Hamas heckler a few minutes in).

Other videos about the campaign can now be found here.

Media coverage

The campaign for twinning Edinburgh with Gaza has been covered by various media, including:

• Edinburgh Evening News
• Skwawkbox
• Redress Information & Analysis
• Shoah: The Palestinian Holocaust
• The National

Older coverage includes Joe Spailpeen explaining, with the help of Robert Burns and Scotland’s need for a positive international profile, what needs to be done and why. It also includes this article by David Hearst, former journalist with the Scotsman and the Guardian, showing how little we in the UK care about what our country has helped to create.

Cyber attacks

The twinning website continues to suffer daily attacks. On 23 March there was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which was foiled. Today at 7:00am the website went offline for 30 minutes as a result of malware, which was removed.

Your support is needed

If you live in Edinburgh, please write to your councillor (if you haven’t done so already) – it takes just two minutes. This is almost the last chance you’ll get to do so.

We still have a couple of thousand flyers to distribute. If you want to help before the 29 March meeting, please phone Pete Gregson on 0758 472 2191. Just two hours of your time would really help.

Pete Gregson (Petitioner)
Twinning Edinburgh with Gaza Petition
www.twingaza.com
info@twingaza.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/twingaza

Twinning supported by Tommy Sheppard MP, Dr Philippa Whitford MP, Cllr Padraig Pearse McShane (Causeway Coast & Glens Council), Interfaith for Palestine UK, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC), Muslim Women’s Association of Edinburgh, Britain Palestine Friendship and Twinning Network, Derby & Derbyshire Friends of Hebron, Northampton Al-Bireh Palestine Friendship Association,Gaza Sky Geeks, GGateway, Husam Zomlot (Palestinian Ambassador to the UK) and Dr. Yahya Sarraj, Mayor of Gaza City