Boycott resolution nullified by Court in Madrid

On late May 2016, the City Council of Rivas Vaciamadrid —a town of 80,483 inhabitants, and a traditional trove of Communist support in Madrid— passed a decision committing the Council to sign neither any political, commercial, agricultural, educational, cultural, sporting or security agreement or contract with Israeli institutions, companies and organizations, nor with bodies, companies and organizations that are involved, collaborate or in any way, capitalize on the violation of International Law and Human Rights in the Palestinian territories or in the occupied Golan.

Only the subjects of the primary boycott -Israeli companies, bodies and organizations- could be exempted from such rigours by abiding to the three goals of the boycott campaign. However, such remedy of a public abjuration de vehementi was not accessible to the subjects of the tertiary boycott -any company, body or organization involved in business with Israeli partners.

An amendment to the original motion inserted a provision by which the Council will adopt any technical proceedings for public procurement and purchases, legally within his realm: a thinly disguised cautionary formula designed to excite from a Court a ruling of nonjusticiability by merits of the decision being unenforceable, and thus, outside the Court’s jurisdiction.

As a matter of form, the City Council was granted the BDS-approved seal that distinguished the city as a “Free Space of Israeli Apartheid”, under the condition of it being displayed in the city’s website and in its publications, and the commitment to disseminate the boycott campaign among residents and local businesses.

Finally, the City Council agreed to engage and promote cooperation with the BDS movement in order to ensure the proper implementation of the boycott decision.

In the debate of the decision, the spokesman of the Council and deputy major announced that he was ready and excited to defend Human Rights in Court before the Zionists. We complied, seeking an immediate relief.

Court number 4 of Madrid issued on late July 2016, a interlocutory writ of injunction ordering the City Council to restrain for carrying out the boycott provisions as their application would determine a real veto to organizations, businesses and bodies of a particular country or which, in the sole opinion of the members of the City Council —i.e., without seeking the opinion of competent international body—, were involved, collaborate or profit from the violation of International Law and Human Rights in the Palestinian territories and in the occupied Golan or as correctly identified by the Court simply because they operating commercially in the ‘Israeli-occupied territories’.

On January 17, 2017, the Court published its decision, annulling the boycott. Not only the City Council lacked powers to pass any resolution that interferes with the conduction of foreign affairs by the Government, the Court deemed every working section of the decision as discriminatory and without any substance in the field of International Law, explicitly stating that resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations did not provide any legal foundation to boycott Israeli institutions, companies or organizations.