The name of the city of Lih shone a few months ago, in the political and media scene, when the municipal council of this city decided, on April 24, 2023, to freeze relations with the Israeli occupation state and with all institutions that facilitate the continuation of the occupation and the violation of the rights of the Palestinian people, and the decision stipulated a “temporary suspension.” The relationship with the State of Israel and partner Israeli institutions until the Israeli authorities put an end to the system of violating the rights of the Palestinian people and the full respect imposed on them by international law and various United Nations resolutions.
If this decision is the most important issued by the city of Liege and a Belgian city, it is not the first. On May 27, 2021, the same municipal council of the city issued a decision calling for "confirmation of the city of Liege's support for the Palestinian people who are subjected to the apartheid regime, to the settlement and military occupation that it is carrying out." The State of Israel,” and the resolution affirmed, “the municipality’s support for the non-violent and anti-racist Palestinian campaign aimed at excluding from the public market every company that has ties to the occupation of Palestine.”
The decision was submitted and succeeded by the group of the Belgian Labor Party, a young left-wing party known for its support for the struggle of the Palestinian people and its support in this direction by the Socialist Party, the Green Party and the representative of the Green Left movement, with the opposition of the representatives of the liberal right-wing parties who represent the minority in the municipal council. The movement of solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian community, and activists over many years, had an impact on reaching this achievement.
It is true that the city of Liege does not establish a cooperation relationship with any Israeli city, although there have been previous attempts to do so under the heading of creating a balance with the establishment of a cooperation relationship and the signing of a twinning agreement with the city of Ramallah in March 2016. It is also true that such a decision, i.e. freezing the relationship with a state The occupation has no political or legal repercussions on the executive and legislative authorities in Belgium, whether at the federal, all-Belgian level, or at the regional level distributed among five regional entities, but it has an important moral and ethical impact in supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people and exposing the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime. This prompted the pro-Israel lobby in Belgium, which is important and influential, to sound the alarm and consider the decision of the municipal council of the city of Liege as part of the "campaign to delegitimize Israel", a campaign that the occupation government places on the top of its priorities.
  If we go to get to know Liege a little, we find that it is the first French-speaking city in the Walloon region, the second province in Belgium, and it is the capital of the province of Liege, with a population of nearly 200 thousand, while the total population of the province reaches almost one million people, and it is the third in Belgium. It is part of the province of the same name, which is the third province in Belgium with a total population of approximately one million and 100 thousand people.
We also find that it was historically associated with close friendship with France, and was affected by the French Revolution in 1789, and it was the first foreign city to receive the prestigious French Legion of Honor, to the extent that some French writers called it "Little Paris."
On the scientific level, Leih has a prestigious university that is associated with many graduate students. It is the university that records on its page that it awarded President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, on September 25, 1998, an honorary doctorate, which President Arafat described in his speech as a message from the university to the Palestinian people and support His struggle for freedom and peace.
On the economic level, the city owns an airport, which is more dedicated to the transport of goods, a river port and three train stations, and it and its suburbs own the most important factories in Belgium specialized in the manufacture of aircraft parts and the world-famous Belgian weapon.
Returning to the relationship with Palestine, the relationship between the two municipalities began when the municipal council of the city of Leh voted on April 29, 2013 on a resolution supporting the establishment of a partnership with Ramallah in three areas: youth, culture and education. This vote was preceded by the visit of the Palestinian ambassador at the time, Mrs. The Badia of Ramallah at that time was engineer Musa Hadid, and this meeting was followed by a meeting between the heads of the two municipalities and the work crews at the European and Palestinian Local Authorities Forum held the same year in the French city of Dunkirk.
These meetings resulted in the signing of a cooperation charter between the two municipalities on November 22, 2014 in Ramallah, on the sidelines of the Local Authorities Forum in Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The LEG delegation visited the city of Ramallah and it was agreed with the Ramallah Municipality to work on three axes, the first of which is culture with a focus on promoting the spread of the French language, the second is the consolidation of cooperation in the field of electronic cooperation and means of communication, and the third is cooperation in the field of environment and renewable energy.
The city of Liege used the expertise of Belgian companies in the city of Liege to provide advice in the technical field. It also formed a committee called Liege - Ramallah, in which a number of interested civil society organizations in Palestine were involved. All of this led Liege to join the "Network of Belgian Local Authorities from For Palestine, which was established on November 29, 2017. LEG had the co-chairmanship of the network with the city of Tournai, in the person of a member of the Municipal Council and former member of the European Parliament, Mrs. Veronique Duqueser, who was granted Palestinian honorary citizenship by President Mahmoud Abbas in February 2015 in Brussels.
In the summer of 2015, Mrs. Veronique Duxer went to Palestine, accompanied by the Counselor at the Palestinian Embassy in Belgium, Hassan Al-Balaawi, where she first met with the late President of the Union of Palestinian Municipalities, Ghassan Al-Shakaa, who was also the mayor of Nablus. She also held meetings with the Mayor of Ramallah, Eng. Musa Hadid, and the concerned staff in the municipality on the issue of twinning, It resulted in defining the axes of cooperation in the following cases: lighting the old city of Ramallah, supporting interest in heritage, reducing energy consumption and caring for sustainable development, provided that the project period is 3 years and a number of civil society institutions between the two countries participate in it, including the Riwaq Center in Palestine and the Foundation Heritage in the Walloon Region, Belgium.
The two municipalities chose the anniversary of Earth Day to launch the twinning by organizing 12 days on Palestinian culture in the city of Liege, starting from March 19, 2016. The launch signal for this event was given by the Mayor of Ramallah, Musa Hadid, his Belgian counterpart Willy Demir, and the Palestinian ambassador to Belgium, Abd al-Rahim al-Farra. The municipality of Liege cooperated And the Embassy of Palestine and the Solidarity Movement with Palestine and the Palestinian community in Liege for the completion of this distinguished event, which included evenings for cinema, theatre, plastic art by the late Palestinian artist Michel Najjar, a presentation of Palestinian costumes and popular food, and the closing evening was in the cultural center of the municipality of Liege Miroir, on Wednesday evening, March 30 A symposium entitled "The Role of Culture in Building the Independent Palestinian State" was presented by each of Hassan Al-Balawi's advisor at the Palestine Mission in Brussels, Mrs. Veronique Duqueser, Head of the Belgian Cities Network for Palestine, and the Belgian archaeologist Jacques Perle, responsible for the Palestinian-Belgian cooperation in the field of antiquities and the implementation of special Belgian projects. Restoration of a number of archaeological sites in Palestine, in cooperation with the Riwaq Foundation.
Almost a year later, on March 9, 2017, the municipality of Liege, in cooperation with the Embassy of Palestine and the Solidarity Movement, organized a cultural festival that was dedicated this year to cinema about the Palestinian cause.
Over the following years, joint visits between the two municipalities continued to embody the distinguished relationship between the two peoples in many fields.