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Hackney Greens to push ahead with controversial Haifa de-twinning pledge at council meeting next week
Jewish News understands a report on Haifa de-twinning will presented at a meeting of full council next week
Hackney’s Green Party administration is set to push ahead with its pre-election pledge to end the borough’s decades-old twinning arrangement with the Israeli city of Haifa.
Despite communal opposition to the move, Jewish News understands a report on Haifa de-twinning will presented at a meeting of Hackney council next week.
The Greens on the north London council have long campaigned to end the twinning arrangement, which was first signed in 1968.
Their election manifesto declared: “Despite repeated, mass community calls for detwinning, the Labour-led council has consistently refused to cut ties with the Israeli city of Haifa under the twinning scheme.”
“In Haifa, Palestinian people live under occupation and apartheid by the Israeli state; this is not a city that reflects Hackney’s values. Hackney’s current and future twinning relationships should reflect our values, rather than undermine them,” the manifesto continued.
The local Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign has also attempted to galvanise support for detwinning with a long-running campaign and petition.
Former Labour councillor Michael Desmond, himself Jewish, had previously branded calls for de-twinning an “appalling, abusive tirade,” adding that the twinning was to “promote cultural values, religious freedom, tolerance and peaceful coexistence”.
But while some Labour and Conservative councillors are expected to continue to raise objections to move, the Greens’ majority in the Town Hall is sufficient to ensure the proposal is likely to pass.
Hackney’s twinning with Haifa was initiated by the then-Mayor of Hackney, Stanley Clinton Davis (who later became a Labour MP and European Commissioner), alongside the Mayor of Haifa, Abba Hushi.
The Hackney Council Twinning Declaration, signed in 1968, expressed hopes that both municipalities would “learn to live wisely from learning about their past, from every act of integrity to help advance the cause of peace, friendship and freedom.”
For decades, the link fostered exchanges between sports teams, students, elected councillors, youth clubs, and business leaders. From 1995 onward, the relationship was anchored primarily by the Hackney Anglo-Israel Friendship Association (HAIFA).
It allowed clinical specialists from Hackney’s Homerton Hospital to collaborate directly with healthcare staff at Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Northern Israel.
However, the relationship with Haifa has remained dormant since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
The previous Labour council stated it would not engage in any twinning activity with Haifa while conflict was ongoing.
Zack Polanski’s party took control of five formerly Labour councils and won two directly elected mayoralties in the local elections in May.
Hackney has joined others in attempting to honour a pledge to divest the borough’s pension funds from companies seen as being complicit in “genocide in Gaza.”
But unlike the de-twinning pledge, divestment has proven more difficult to implement.
The Green administration’s flagship ethical investment policy directly conflicts with the strict regulatory frameworks of the London Collective Investment Vehicle (London CIV), which manages the pooled pension funds of 32 London boroughs.
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