Labour has attacked the Greens for making ‘one mistake after another’ as the Mayor of Haifa invites the Green leader to come and see its society for herself
The Mayor of Haifa has invited Hackney’s Mayor to visit his city and witness its “complex reality” for herself following the Green-led council’s move to cut ties between the two municipalities. Hackney’s 58-year-old link with the Israeli port city is expected to formally cease in the coming months, after the council voted last week (July 28) to trigger a review into all its twinning relationships, including Haifa.
Mayor Zoë Garbett has argued that “maintaining a civic connection in Israel is at odds with our anti-racist values” amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and UN commission of inquiry reports concluding that Israel has committed genocide.
But writing in The Times on Wednesday (August 5), Mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, criticised the move and what he termed the “delegitimisation of an entire society through a distortion of reality”. In an apparent riposte to Garbett, Yahav added that his role as mayor was “not to conduct global politics”.
Instead of cutting ties, he invited her to visit Haifa and see its society for herself, “not through screens and social media posts”.
Hackney entered into a ‘twinning’ arrangement with Haifa in 1968 to “encourage friendly contacts and exchanges between the ordinary citizens”. But since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, activists have piled pressure on the council to terminate the link as a growing number of organisations, including Amnesty International, have alleged that Israel has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Gaza Strip.
According to the council, in recent years the twinning has been largely limited to hospital exchanges between Homerton Hospital and Rambam Medical Centre, stretching back roughly three decades. This relationship has lain dormant since the swaps were paused amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), however, argues that any link with the state of Israel must be rescinded in light of the death toll in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, which the International Court of Justice deems as illegal and constituting apartheid.
Though Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, is not in the occupied territories, the PSC has highlighted the historic expulsion of roughly 60,000 Palestinian Arabs from the city by Zionist forces during the 1948 civil war; its enduring location as the global headquarters for arms producer Elbit Systems supplying the Israel Defence Forces; and the “racist domination” faced by Palestinian citizens there.
Mayor Yahav, however, claims the city is an “exceptional model of coexistence in the Middle East”. “For more than a century, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Bahá’ís have lived alongside one another here, not as an abstract ideal but as a way of life,” he said.
“As in every democratic society, we experience arguments and differences of opinion. But we believe the way to address them is not by severing ties or singling out entire cities and communities. It is through dialogue, familiarity and working together,” Yahav added.
Though the decision is still subject to consultation and pending a review by a cross-party working group, the move has stoked accusations of “spite” and antisemitism – inflamed by the council initially setting the consultation deadline as October 7, 2026, three years to the day after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 250 people taken hostage.
Garbett was forced to apologise to Mayor Yahav after inviting him to respond to the de-twinning proposals by this date, calling it a “deeply regretful oversight”. Hackney Labour councillor Ben Lucas has since demanded the council investigate how the original deadline was set, and the party’s opposition leader is also understood to have met with Mayor Garbett on the matter.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), a Hackney Labour spokesperson criticised the council for “singling out one country” and called the move to de-twin “contradictory and confusing”.
“[The council] calls for a review of the twinning arrangements while at the same time proposing to end the twinning relationship with Haifa. If the outcome of the review is already being pre-determined, what is the purpose of the review?” the spokesperson said.
“It seems that one mistake after another is happening with this new administration as they pursue their aim to de-twin from Israel.”
Hackney Council did not respond to the LDRS’s request for comment.
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