Dundee and Nablus – An Entwined History

Dundee has been twinned with the Palestinian town of Nablus in the occupied West Bank for over 45 years now. The Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association (DNTA) was formed in 1993 to consolidate this relationship. At that time, Lord Provost Tom McDonald established an association for each of Dundee’s twin cities. DNTA has since helped to spread news about the twinning throughout Dundee and beyond. It encourages membership, organises activities, publishes a newsletter and arranges visits to and from Nablus. However, the history of the actual twinning between Dundee and Nablus dates back to 1980.

Presentation items representing Dundee's twinning with Nablus - a carved wooden shield and a framed embroidery panel (University of Dundee Museums)

At the 45th anniversary of the twinning in November 2025, DNTA member Mike Arnott gave a speech recounting its history. He explained that, months before the twinning act, in June 1980, the representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)^[1] in the UK, Nabil Ramlawi, came to Dundee for the launch conference of a group called Trade Union Friends of Palestine (TUFP). The following January, Dundee’s Labour MP Ernie Ross led a TUFP delegation to Lebanon to meet members of the Palestine Trade Union Federation in various parts of Beirut. Jim Torrance, Secretary of Dundee Trades Union Council at that time, moved a resolution at the annual Scottish Trade Union Council Congress calling for self-determination for the Palestinian people, which was a first in Britain. However, the STUC Congress remitted it, basically removing it from the agenda, to allow for further consultation.

As Mike adds, another context that helped to spark the twinning happened at the University of Dundee. In the 1970s, there were significant reports of intimidation against Iraqi progressive, communist and Kurdish students by supporters of the Ba’athist regime. Iraqi regime agents and loyalist students – often linked to the National Union of Iraqi Students  – monitored and threatened fellow students involved with the Iraqi Communist Party, Kurdish democratic movements such as the KDP or PUK, or other opposition groups. These actions, which occurred in several universities across the UK, were part of the Saddam Hussein regime’s efforts to silence dissent among Iraqi international students. As a response, Socialist students at the University of Dundee took action in solidarity, including knocking on the doors of these agents in the early hours of the morning with a simple message: We know where you live. Leave our friends alone. The socialist students, part of Dundee University Left Alliance, subsequently asked their Iraqi comrades if they needed help with anything else, and the response was: Don’t help us, help the Palestinians.

As a result of this, a group of Labour students took Dundee’s Palestinian student leaders, including Youssef Allan (later to become the Palestinian Authority’s first representative in Dublin) to meet the local Labour Party Secretary, George Galloway. This was a big step towards sparking the twinning between Dundee and Palestine. At the time there were around 100 Palestinian students at the University and support for the Palestinian cause had blossomed there. Mary McGregor (DNTA Convenor at present) remembers joining Dundee University Friends of Palestine in 1975, five years before the twinning started in 1980.

Mike recounts that the idea of making a twinning link between Dundee and Nablus arose after the car of the Mayor of Nablus at the time, Bassam Shaka’a, was booby-trapped in June 1980 by an Israeli terrorist group supported by the army, one of three similar attacks against West Bank mayors at that time. He lost his legs and came to the UK to be fitted with new prosthetics, using the expertise of the Dundee Limb Fitting Centre in Broughty Ferry. The existing trade union links between Dundee and Palestine led to George Galloway, Ernie Ross MP and Dundee Councillor Colin Rennie meeting Shaka’a in London, where Rennie suggested the twinning. On 27 November 1980 the decision to twin with Nablus was passed by Dundee District Council in the face of considerable opposition. Two weeks later, Mayor Shaka’a came to Dundee, where he was welcomed by Lord Provost Jim Gowans, Ernie Ross MP and a group of students. He brought gifts, including a shield that is still on display in Dundee City Chambers. By December that year the Palestinian flag was flying in Dundee alongside those from its other twin cities.

Bassam Shaka’a, Mayor of Nablus and his wife, with Lord Provost James Gowans watching Highland Games in Dundee, 1981 (Dundee Courier & Advertiser 6 July 1981, courtesy of DC Thomson & Co Ltd)

The Labour Party at that time had pushed for the twinning decision. At the council chamber, the decision was taken by seventeen votes to four. Earlier twinnings (which had started in 1946 with Orléans, France, followed by Zadar, Yugoslavia in 1959, Würzburg, West Germany in 1962 and Alexandria, USA in 1974) had attracted little controversy. The Nablus twinning, however, did not go smoothly - Galloway was later quoted in The Washington Post as saying that “all hell broke loose” as a result. The proposal faced a lot of backlash, especially from local Conservatives, who viewed the PLO as a terrorist organisation. Tory Councillor Jack Barnett stated in the council meeting: “This has nothing whatever to do with town twinning. It is a diabolical political stunt that is obviously motivated by the Palestine Liberation Organisation… It is a blatant attempt to use Dundee District Council as a platform for their obnoxious policies.”

Several accusations and attempts to reverse the twinning were made by opposing groups. Dundee Jewish leader Albert Jacob, for instance, contesting the twinning, claimed that Arab students at the university had subjected their Jewish counterparts to “a number of incidents”. When the twinning was sealed he told the press that he was “desperately afraid for the good name of Dundee”. The city’s Jewish community protested the twinning to the British Home Secretary, claiming that it had encouraged an outbreak of anti-Semitic vandalism and swastika painting in the city. In response, the Lord Provost stated that vandalism of the kind reported by synagogues in Dundee had affected all parts of the city and he denied that it was antisemitic in nature.

Some months after the twinning, the Board of Deputies of British Jews submitted a petition to Parliament calling for Dundee District Council to rescind the twinning with Nablus and remove the Palestinian flag from the council chamber. Councillor Charles Bowman, leader of the council’s Labour group, argued that opponents of the twinning appeared intent on introducing into Dundee racial tensions that had never previously existed there. And other Jewish figures, such as the spokesman for the Dundee Hebrew Congregation, stated that they reserved judgement on the twinning plan.

Despite the initial backlash, the twinning eventually succeeded. As Mary McGregor told The Courier in 2025: “In 1980, the twinning was an overtly political decision, made by brave and humanitarian politicians, highlighting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination… Since then it’s evolved into a grassroots effort to build friendship and understanding between communities with many practical solidarity projects.”

After the twinning was sealed in Dundee, Mike Arnott recalls, awareness and support for the Palestinian cause started increasing. 1981 witnessed an almost successful attempt to twin Dundee University Students’ Association with Birzeit University in the West Bank. After a long debate, the decision was defeated on a show of hands, which he claims occurred after members of the University Rugby Club and their supporters were admitted near the end and permitted to vote. However, in 1982, a resolution from the Dundee branch at the UK Labour Party Conference led to the Party formally recognising the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. A Dundee-based publication called Palestine Post was also launched that year.

Over the years, several visits have taken place between the two cities, though this has become increasingly difficult with the political situation in the West Bank. Nevertheless, in October 1996 an official twinning document was signed in Dundee by Lord Provost Mervyn Rolfe and Mayor Ghassan Shaka’a. It declared: “By the re-affirmation of the arrangement, the two cities of Dundee and Nablus pledge that together they will actively co-operate to ensure the continuing development of close relationships between their citizens.”

Celebrating the naming of Nablus Avenue in Dundee in 2015 (courtesy of Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association)

In 2005, the 25th anniversary of the twinning was celebrated with a party and a civic reception in Dundee where Nablus was represented by three delegates from the projects DNTA has supported in the city. Meanwhile, the DNTA convener was in Nablus, marking the occasion there. A new document – a joint declaration between the two cities – was signed by the Lord Provost of Dundee and the Mayor of Nablus, where both cities pledged to co-operate to maintain and strengthen close relationships between citizens, facilitate direct links between institutions and organisations involved in twinning activities, and encourage youth exchanges to help future generations understand the cities’ shared relationship and their roles in national history.

Ever since, DNTA has been promoting the Palestinian cause through different means, ranging from activism to diplomacy to community activities. In April 2021, Dundee Trades Union Council (DTUC) joined with DNTA in submitting a motion to Dundee City Council calling for the city to officially recognise the State of Palestine. In doing so, Dundee became the second UK city (after Sheffield) to take that step. DTUC also sent a delegation of five to Nablus in November 2022, which was the first official Trades Council delegation from the UK to Palestine. It met with the General Secretary of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and signed a Solidarity Agreement with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Nablus.

Ever since its creation, DNTA has been trying to build genuine links between people and communities in Dundee and Nablus, as well as amplifying Palestinian voices. Its members strive to be present in many community events in Dundee, where they give talks, set stalls to promote and sell Nablus products and craftworks, as well as holding displays of the organisation’s history and activities in community centres, libraries and schools. Their support for Nablus includes funding to plant trees in farms that have been damaged by settler attacks, funding the studies of student nurses and midwives in Nablus universities, collaborating with the Trade Union Movement in Dundee in providing fire engines and appliances to their twin city, as well as undertaking and encouraging visits between both cities. All these efforts aim to support the resilience and steadfastness of the Palestinian communities in Nablus, a city that continuously faces Israeli army and settler oppression.

Written by Kate Khair, May 2026

Sources:

Michael Alexander, “Do people in Dundee still support the city’s twinning with Nablus in Palestine?” The Courier 3 October 2025.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Palestine Liberation Organization”, www.britannica.com. Accessed 24 May 2026.

Maher Charif, “Palestine Liberation Organization (I): The Reemergence of the Palestinian National Movement,” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question. Accessed 24 May 2026.

William Claiborne, The Washington Post, 29 March 1981.

Arjan El Fassed, “The Absence of National Unity: An Interview with Bassam Shaka,” The Electronic Intifada, 29 August 2005.

Brian McCartney, The Scotsman, 28 November 1980 & 28 March 1981.

Mike Arnott, Nablus Twinning History Speech  at the 45th Anniversary Commemoration of Dundee’s twinning with Nablus, 27 November 2025 – available here.

“Our Twinning,” Dundee-Nablus Twinning Association website. Accessed 24 May 2026.

Dundee Courier and Advertiser, 19 November 1980.

^[1] The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) is a political entity formed in 1964 as an umbrella for the different Palestinian parties and resistance movements. It was considered as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and sought to promote their liberation and right to self-determination, but was controversial at the time due to its use of militant action.