Pete Gregson writes:

At 5pm on Monday 28 March, just 17 hours before twinning Edinburgh with Gaza City was to be discussed by Edinburgh City Council, the council announced that the item had been withdrawn from its agenda, to allow officers to “give full consideration to legal matters raised since publication of the agenda”.

I was told by my local councillor that the Israeli authorities have challenged any consideration of the matter which, they claimed, could be unlawful on grounds that it “could” support Hamas – even if negatively discussed – listed by the UK’s Conservative government as a terrorist organisation. The council’s legal team had no expertise on that part of the law, so they’re having to check.

The Israeli intervention was prompted by a threat on 24 March from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLI) which warned councillors that if they went ahead and twinned, they could be facing 14 years in prison, using UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s anti-Hamas legislation of November 2021.

Petitioner Pete Gregson, who was due to address the relevant council committee, said:

Israel is saying that even to discuss Hamas negatively is to support it. This is ridiculous conjecture. Israel is undermining our democracy with threats, stopping friendly relations between cities.

Gaza Municipality had on 28 March submitted for Edinburgh councillors, a one-minute video, shown below, which shows no Hamas involvement.

Gaza City Council had also sent its Edinburgh counterpart a press release reassuring them of no Hamas involvement in the twinning bid.

On the afternoon of 28 March Edinburgh City Council leaders had also been informed by Councillor Padraig McShane, of the former Moyle Council, who has been through a previous twinning bid, not to worry about the possibility of Hamas involvement. (Councillor McShane is currently with the Causeway Coast and Glens Council, which absorbed Moyle a couple of years ago, causing the previous twinning bid with Gaza, set up in 2012 by Cllr McShane, to stop.)

Cllr McShane had faced a similar legal threat back in 2012. A similar communication was sent to Moyle District Council. It resulted in the council choosing to consult the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. None could find fault with the twinning. Cllr McShane has told the Edinburgh Council Legal Department and council leaders: “This UKLFI threat is entirely a red herring. A twinning agreement is between two sets of people.”

However, the council officers felt too threatened to listen and pulled the report from the Policy Committee meeting’s agenda that was scheduled for 29 March (see item 7.8 here).

The Gaza Mayor, Dr Yahya Sarraj, had been planning to address the meeting. A number of other groups supporting the twinning bid expressed disappointment.

Pete Gregson, the author of the petition to twin Edinburgh with Gaza, said:

This is the terrible news that we feared most. It appears that the UKLFI weren’t getting anywhere, so they called up Israel itself, which made such a fuss that the council officers caved in. The UKLFI told the council to pull the twinning item last Thursday [24 March], [but] the council ignored them… and then on Monday [28 March] at about 3pm it seems [Israeli Prime Minister] Naftali Bennet might have called them himself. Anyway, the corporate lawyers at the council just said: “This is beyond our expertise” and told the councillors to pull it. (Yes, it does seem odd that [appointed] officers now tell the [elected] councillors what to do, and not the other way round, but that is where we are.) What is very important, though, is for us not to attack the council for being so fearful – we must keep them on our side.

We are asking campaign supporters to help us protest. We’d like as many folk as possible to write to the newspapers about it. The press will realise then that it’s a story that needs to be covered. Here are some addresses – please copy info@twingaza.com in when you write… Please be sure to reference our website at www.twingaza.com in your letter – that way new supporters can find out more and get in touch. Here’s who you can write it to – if you write to a publication that has already published info about twinning, there is much more chance it will be used; we’ve marked those with a star*. Please write to “Letters to the Editor” and always give your home address and contact phone numbers – they’ll probably ring to check you are who you say you are!

It’s only if we kick up a stink that we can stop Israel doing this. There is a group in Hastings trying to twin with Al-Mawasi in Gaza – they’ll be next.

Now that the report has been pulled, it will be mid-June before the council discuss it again, during which time the Israelis will do their very best to make sure twinning with Gaza never happens. They mean to isolate the Gazans forever. We don’t want to let them beat us on this.

There is an election coming on 4 May and all through April there will be husting events… It’s a perfect time to put candidates on the spot, asking them for their view on Israel controlling our democracy. To tell us that “even negatively considering” twinning is to commit a crime is outrageous.

The Israelis are drunk on their own power and now is the time to take a stand on this.

Please help us to get our politicians and our media going on this. Many of you used the website to write to the councillors… [L]et’s use it to write to them again, expressing our dismay that Israel is dictating to our elected members what they can and cannot say about Palestine. There is a new letter [template] you can use at Twin Edinburgh with Gaza: What you can do “

If you want to be added to the mailing list for updates, please write to info@twingaza.com.

Michael Mansfield QC may help us

The petitioner is acquainted with Michael Mansfield from previous campaigning and has asked him to help. Mr Mansfield responded sayimg: “Stand firm”. We’ve asked him if he would be willing to get more involved, and we’ve asked our council leaders if they might consider working with him.

Mr Mansfield is simply the best rights lawyer we have in the UK. He has been described as “the king of human rights work”. There is no case that he has not been at the centre of: Grenfell, Bloody Sunday, the Birmingham Six, the Hillsborough disaster, the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Dodi al-Fayed, and the McLibel case.

Mr Mansfield is Jewish, and he is angry about Israeli war crimes – see here. On Palestine, he says: “I cannot turn my back to it.”

Meanwhile, the petitioner has written to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon MSP and Minister for Social Security and Local Government Ben McPherson MSP pointing out that this is a matter of foreign interference in our local government affairs, and asking if they can help. He is hoping for a sympathetic response. In May 2017 Ms Sturgeon told the Israeli envoy to the UK that the situation in the Palestinian enclave must end.

Media coverage

The story has been covered by a host of outlets, including:

• Edinburgh Evening News
• The Scotsman
• The National
• Edinburgh Reporter
• Edinburgh Live
• Redress Information & Analysis