Valencia Court Stops Israel Boycott

Judicial Court #10 of Valencia has paralyzed the Israel boycott adopted by the municipality of Xeraco, a town of 6,180 inhabitants near the city of Valencia. This Town Hall had voted in February of 2016 not to establish any type of agreement or contract, whether political, institutional, commercial, agricultural, educational, cultural, sportive or security-related, with businesses or institutions which did not recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; to join the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel, and to distribute the logo «Israeli Apartheid-Free Space» to residents. The motion was proposed by Compromis, the party currently in power, with the support of PSOE-PSV and «Canviar Xeraco» («Change Xeraco»), a coalition made up of Podemos, Izquierda Unida and ERC ( extreme left and Catalan separatist parties, respectively). The PP (centrist right) abstained from voting.

The court decision pointed to the imposition of this type of limitation of public contracts as unjustified restriction of businesses and institutions, and thus in possible violation of the constitutional right to equal treatment.

Recently, the Qatar-born leader of the BDS campaign, Omar Barghouti, in «Mondoweiss», called a wave of anti-Israel declarations in Spanish towns «inspiring», claiming them as among the BDS movement’s top achievements. The Palestinian National Committee for BDS (BNC), as well as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), have stepped up attacks on ACOM, claiming that its legal activity is «intolerable». They have reason to worry: this latest judicial decision paralyzing a boycott is the eighth one in the year 2016 to result in local anti-Israel boycotts being stopped on solid legal grounds.