(JTA) — The Spanish municipality of Velez Malaga said it will rescind a City Council resolution in support of boycotting Israel following legal action.
Wednesday’s decision to cancel the resolution, which labeled Israel an apartheid state, came one day after a court in Malaga issued an injunction ruling that the motion was illegal on the grounds that it violates constitutional principles guaranteeing equality and proscribing incitement to discrimination.
A spokesperson for the local government of Velez Malaga told ACOM, a pro-Israel lobby group that in recent years has secured more than 20 rulings against boycott initiatives, that the municipality in the near future will scrap the motion adopted in May in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, or BDS.
Velez Malaga, a municipality of 70,000, is part of the Costa del Sol area, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from across Europe and beyond.
ACOM has been involved in obtaining six similar rulings this year against local councils that passed resolutions in favor of BDS, including precedent-setting ones by some of Spain’s highest tribunals.
Some 50 Spanish municipalities had passed resolutions in recent years endorsing BDS — more than in any other European country. But echoing belatedly the judicial policy of courts in neighboring France, the Spanish judiciary has cracked down on BDS in recent years.
In addition to protesting what they consider Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the authors of the Velez Malaga motion also bemoaned what they labeled Israel’s “1948 annexation of 78 percent of the territory of historical Palestine.”
