Barcelona city suspends relations with Israel over Gaza war

Barcelona City Council has suspended the city’s relations with the Israeli regime as long as the latter continues its ongoing deadly war against the Gaza Strip.

The council took the move on Friday by adopting a relevant declaration, which obliged the regime to “respect the basic rights of the Palestinian people,” Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency reported.

The declaration was put forward by former mayor Ada Colau’s far-left Barcelona en Comun party and backed by his replacement Jaume Collboni’s Socialist Party, as well as the left-wing separatist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) party.

The Israeli regime launched the war on October 7 following an operation, dubbed al-Aqsa Storm, by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The Government Media Office in Gaza announced in a report on Thursday that at least 14,854 Palestinians, including more than 6,150 children and 4,000 women, have been killed and over 36,000 others injured in the Israeli strikes.

Tel Aviv has also blocked the flow of water, food, and electricity towards Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

Friday’s declaration condemned all attacks on the civilian population as well as “any collective punishment, forced displacement, systematic destruction of homes and civil infrastructure as well as the blockade of energy, water, food, and medical supplies to the population of the Gaza Strip.”

According to Barcelona’s approved statement, the main obstacles to long-lasting peace are “the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories,” and the “denial of rights” to the people.

Other high-profile members of Spain’s government, including former minister Ione Belarra, have censured the “deafening silence” of her country and the Israeli regime’s other Western allies on Tel Aviv’s ferocious warfare against Gaza.

Also on Thursday, Belarra, who was removed from her ministerial portfolio due to the criticism earlier in the week, said in a post on X, former Twitter, that she and her colleagues were “concerned” that a trip made by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to the occupied territories earlier “could be used to whitewash [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who is a war criminal.”