Hertsmere council leader pulls out of Hackney Green-led summit after Haifa ties cut

The leader of Hertsmere council has withdrawn from a local government summit organised by the Green Mayor of Hackney, informing her that “you cannot convene unity at home while exporting division abroad”.

Following the Green-controlled Hackney council’s decision to cancel its twinning agreement with Haifa, the elected Mayor of the Borough, Zoe Garbett, wrote to the Mayor of Haifa to inform him that “maintaining a civic connection in Israel is at odds with our anti-racist values.

On Friday, Jeremy Newmark, leader of Hertsmere council, wrote to Garbett, declining her invitation to an “emergency anti-austerity summit” in September.

“On the substance, we agree”, wrote to her.

“Local government is being asked to do more with less, year after year, and I have long argued that genuine fiscal devolution is the only serious answer to the funding crisis facing the services our communities depend upon. Your stated aim – to bring council leaders, trade unions and campaign groups together to determine shared priorities, demands and next steps — is a serious one, and I take it as genuinely meant.

“That is precisely why I must be candid with you: you cannot convene unity at home while exporting division abroad. Your recent efforts to terminate Hackney’s historic twinning with Haifa sit entirely at odds with the non-partisan, coalition-building role you now seek to play.”

In her letter to Mayor Yahav, Garbett was clear that the decision to un-twin from Haifa was connected to resolutions about boycotting Israel “set out in my party’s manifesto”. She claimed that the decision was a result of “the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the UN Commission of Inquiry Reports concluding Israel has committed genocide”. Israel has maintained that the Commission of Inquiry was staffed by those with long record of hostility towards the country.

In Newmark’s own letter, he went on to say that “Municipal internationalism matters most in exactly the times we are living through. Twinning agreements are made between communities, not governments – between neighbourhoods, schools, sports clubs and families. That is their whole point. They are built to withstand the storms of international politics, not to become casualties of them. When a council tears one up to make a political statement, it is not the government of a distant country that pays the price; it is the ordinary people on both sides for whom the bridge existed.”

He went on to tell Garbett that “I write as a Labour and Co-operative councillor who has campaigned for decades for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and who has spent more than thirty years fighting antisemitism, racism and extremism in all their forms. I oppose the current Netanyahu Government and have campaigned actively against it.

“And I can tell you plainly: severing Hackney from Haifa – a mixed city, home to Jews and Arabs living and working side by side – is a gift to Netanyahu and his camp. It vindicates their narrative that the world makes no distinction between the Israeli government and the Israeli people. Nothing could serve them better.”

In March 2023, Borehamwood and Elstree twinned with the Israeli town of Shoham in central Israel; the idea had originally been proposed by Newmark himself. He informed Garbett that “Shoham has brought mixed Jewish-Arab delegations to our borough – football teams, tennis squads, youth groups, councillors, public servants and NGOs. It has delivered real sporting, cultural and economic exchange, and it has helped keep community relations between our Jewish, Muslim and other residents strong through the most difficult of times. That is what municipal internationalism is for.

“Zoë, gesture politics in E8 will not help a single family in Gaza. It will not move Israeli policy by an inch. What it will do is corrode community relations here in Britain, at the very moment local leaders should be holding communities together. A convenor of a sector-wide movement against austerity cannot simultaneously cheerlead positions that come dangerously close to setting community against community. Under these circumstances, I do not feel able to attend your event.”

Garbett’s letter had originally informed Yahav that he had until 7 October 2026 to respond. After fury from Jewish groups at the date chosen, given the mass murder by Hamas on that date which sparked the current conflict, the Green Mayor subsequently wrote to Yahav to apologise and inform him that the response deadline had been pushed back by a week.

Newmark closed his letter by telling Garbett that “I will be honest with you: if Hackney walks away from Haifa, Hertsmere will walk towards it. That is not a threat; it is a promise to the residents of both our boroughs.

“We will deepen and broaden our partnership with Shoham to include links with Haifa and elsewhere in Israel – not out of any sympathy for Israeli government policy, but because building bridges delivers real benefits to real people, and someone should always be in the business of building them. I would far rather we did that work together – and I extend that invitation to Hackney today.”