The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates today welcomed the decision of the Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau to suspend all institutional relations with Israel, including the cancellation of the twinning agreement with the city of Tel Aviv in protest against the Israeli crime of apartheid against the Palestinians.

The Foreign Ministry called in a statement on other cities to take similar steps, given that this step puts pressure on the occupation government to stop all its violations and crimes against the Palestinian people, their land, sanctities, and rights, and to stop all its illegal unilateral measures that undermine peace opportunities.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau suspended institutional relations with Israel, including the twinning agreement with Tel Aviv, “until the Israeli authorities put an end to the system of violations of Palestinian human rights and fully comply with the obligations imposed on them by international law and the various United Nations resolutions.”

She said in a press conference yesterday that she has called “on more than 100 organizations and more than 4,000 people to defend the human rights of Palestinians, and that is why, in my capacity as mayor, I informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a letter that I froze the institutional relationship between Barcelona and Tel Aviv.”

The Parliament of the Spanish region of Catalonia issued a resolution in June 2022 recognizing that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.

The resolution affirmed that “the system applied by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories is contrary to international law and is equivalent to the crime of apartheid as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency