Preston’s Palestinian friendship agreement

Preston is to enter into a friendship agreement with the Palestinian city of Hebron.

The partnership with the Middle Eastern territory will be finalised by Preston City Council after it was backed by a majority of elected members.

It will commit the two cities to forging practical and cultural links designed to draw them closer together

The authority began the search for a suitable friendship partner early last year in response to a call from 14 of Preston’s mosques in the wake of the conflict in Gaza.

The city council announced in March that it had alighted upon Hebron, which is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

A report presented to a meeting of the full council on Thursday said some other possibilities were not pursued “largely because of current active conflict in the town, city or area, which would make meaningful contact and engagement impossible”.

Nevertheless, during an impassioned debate, it was the plight of the people of war-torn Gaza that dominated.

However, a minority of councillors expressed concern that the city was involving itself in a region riven with conflict – and could even be seen to be taking one side over the other.

Labour council leader Matthew Brown acknowledged the “complexity and the emotive nature” of the proposal, but sought to root the idea in a desire to show support for the Palestinian community in Preston itself.

He said he had heard “heartbreaking stories of the scale of loss of their relatives and friends as part of this ongoing conflict”.

Cllr Brown said it had been “pretty impossible” to gain consensus across all local communities about the friendship plan, but insisted efforts had been to do so by consulting with members of the city’s faith covenant group.

For other councillors, however, the focus was on what was happening in the Middle East itself – and the reason the friendship plan had been proposed in the first place.

Cabinet member for climate change Suleman Sarwar said he was “proud” that Preston had “not stayed silent” on the subject.

“This friendship agreement is more than symbolic – it’s a message we stand with the Palestinian people in solidarity, in humanity and in community.

“What’s happening in Gaza is not just a conflict, it’s the mass killing of civilians – hospitals bombed, schools flattened, entire families erased,” Cllr Sarwar said.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, more than 56,000 people have been killed in the war there over the past 21 months – half of them women and children.

The fighting began after Hamas – which controls the Gaza Strip and is proscribed as a terror group by the UK – launched an attack on Israel on 7th October, 2023, in which around 1,200 civilians were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.   Israel claims 20,000 of the dead in Gaza are Hamas militants – and says that it does not target civilians, but that Hamas uses them as human shields.

Amber Afzal, cabinet member for planning and regulation, said the issue was not one of “politics”, but “humanity”.

“There has never been a war in history where 80 percent of the country has been totally destroyed [and] 100 percent of the population displaced.

“Gaza has officially run out of baby formula, because of the aid blockade.  Newborns are now starving and malnutrition is rife,” said Cllr Afzal.

Israel has previously claimed that any food shortages were due to aid being looted by Hamas.  Since last month, after the blockade was lifted, that aid has been distributed via the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Federation whose distribution hubs – and the routes to them –  have been the site of 549 killings of food-seeking civilians by the Israeli Defence Force, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The Israeli government has rejected claims that “hundreds of people” have been dying while obtaining aid – a situation the United Nations has described as the “weaponisation of food” and a war crime.

The report to councillors outlining the Preston-Hebron friendship plan pledged that it would be done in a spirit of “openness and tolerance” – and declared it was “a symbol of our support”, not just for the people of Palestine, but also “the wider Middle East and those of all faiths and communities who are suffering through conflict across the globe”.

However, Liberal Democrat Daniel Guise, excoriated that suggestion.

“If you reach out the hand of friendship to one party [in a] conflict without reaching out to the other, you do not get to claim you are doing so in the name of all those who are suffering.

“This council will have offered support to the side governed by theocratic dictatorship and refused to offer the same support to the side governed by a secular democracy.  It will have offered a level of support to Muslims who are suffering which it will have failed to offer to Jews who are suffering,” said Cllr Guise.

However, fellow Lib Dem Mark Jewell told the meeting he wanted to “disassociate” himself from his colleague’s remarks.

“[Just] because my neighbour at number 42 has fallen on hard times and I reach out the hand of friendship, doesn’t mean I’m not a friend for my neighbour at number 46,” Cllr Jewell said.   “What is going on in Gaza is an atrocity and is disgusting.”

Meanwhile, Cllr Guise also accused the authority of making little effort to find an Israeli town with which to strike a friendship agreement since pledging to do so last August, saying he discovered two possibilities – along with the organisations to facilitate the move – with just a couple of hours of research.

“You’ve had ten months …you didn’t do it because you didn’t want to,” he added.

The council said at the time it would initially be pursuing a tie-up with a place in Palestine, because the Muslim community in Preston had requested that before the local Jewish community had made a call for an equivalent arrangement in Israel. It says it remains committed to the latter project as well.

However, Conservative group leader Stephen Thompson cautioned councillors against what he described as a “problematic proposition”.

“We are getting involved in a lot of sectarianism that’s divisive…and really not a good idea for community relations.

“Do we really need to get involved with this?  I think it will kick up problems in the future,” Cllr Thompson said.

He also told the meeting that one of the primary purposes of the friendship plan – exchange visits between the two cities – would be impossible to fulfil from Preston’s perspective, because “there is no insurance that would cover any of us going into Hebron”.

However, Nweeda Khan, deputy mayor and member champion for communities, rejected the criticisms of the proposal, saying it was a “humanitarian gesture”.

The city council received support in its search for a friend from the Britain Palestinian Friendship and Twinning Network.

WHY HEBRON?

Preston City Council says it chose Hebron as the location for its Palestinian friendship agreement, because of the “commonalities between the two places as industrial cities with diverse populations”.

The city is one of the oldest in the Middle East and has a population of just over 200,000.  It boasts significant agriculture, glass and leather industries – and it is a major trading centre.

Located 19 miles south of Jerusalem, Hebron was occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. However, following an agreement reached 30 years later, it has since been split between the control of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Preston’s cabinet member for community wealth building, Valerie Wise, decried the fact that Hebron is “an unequal society” where Palestinian residents are excluded from some roads which “only Israelis are allowed to use”.

However, Cllr Thompson said such division was one of the reasons to shun the friendship deal, because the proposed partner was “not a multicultural, integrated city” in Preston’s own mould.

THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

Once the formal friendship deal is signed, Preston and Hebron will commit to:

***declaring the City of Preston and the City of Hebron linked in friendship;

*** working in co-operation for the benefit of the citizens of both cities;

***sharing knowledge of our cultures and traditions to bring our citizens closer together, sharing the values of tolerance, respect and understanding;

***promoting cultural exchanges through sport, education, community work, tourism and any other opportunity that may arise;

***establishing shared youth programmes, hosting art exhibitions and publishing materials of mutual interest to the people of each city;

***collaborating on matters of politics, management, economy and administration, sharing best practice on the work of Preston City Council and the City Council of Hebron;

***promoting official delegations, comprising representatives from local government, social foundations, schools and communities, to reinforce the ties of friendship.

The duration of the agreement will be unlimited and determined according to the wishes of both signatories.