The BDS campaign is a peace initiative led by civil society organizations, political parties and unions representing the Palestinian people, and is supported by a worldwide network of entities that make up the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Municipal Council for Cooperation of Bilbao is an advisory body and dialogue are represented in the different social agencies working in the world of Cooperation in Bilbao. It is currently made up of 45 NGDOs plus the four political parties represented municipality. The secretary has the area of equality, cooperation and citizenship. Its purpose is to unite efforts and promote improved management in the work of solidarity and cooperation to achieve a more human and greater information and transparency.
The BDS campaign calls world to introduce measures to pressure Israel and to avoid economic, political and business with a state that violates international law and violates the UN resolutions. With the consent of the European Union and its member states, human rights of the Arab population of Palestine are being repeatedly violated, like civil rights with citizens as Arabs in Israel, religious criteria and discriminated against ethnic-nationalist.
Therefore, BDS demand the world to boycott Israel, its institutions and enterprises, and also to withdraw its investments in companies that benefit from the occupation or denial of the rights of the refugee population.
The Municipal Council of Bilbao Cooperation has decided to join this campaign because it relies on the defense of human rights as universal, indivisible and interdependent (Article 30 of its statement). The Council considers the civic campaign as a means to change situations of injustice and institutional violence and move toward justice and peace.
Council members are aware that from a local authority can not solve the causes of conflict and achieve a just peace for Palestine. However, is committed not to put the economic interests of the peoples rights and human rights of those who shape it.
In Bilbao, the Palestinian solidarity movement has an important and active role. In fact, in October 2008, the city hosted the Meeting “The Bilbao Initiative: for a just peace on Palestine,” in which women and men of Palestinian organizations, Israel’s anti-colonial movement and international civil society shared perspectives on challenges to generate a genuine mobilization of the international society in defense of justice and sustainable peace for Palestine.
