Belfast City Hall Palestine flag: Alliance flip from supporting move to opposing it, but now won't say why
Alliance swapped their position on flying the Palestinian flag over Belfast, flipping from backing the move to trying to stop it happening.
But party officials now won’t give full details on why politicians adopted the opposite position, instead pointing to what they described as “sensitivities around flag policies” on the city council.
When the issue was first discussed at the start of November, Alliance joined Sinn Fein and the SDLP to form an overwhelming majority of councillors who were in favour of flying the Palestinian banner from city hall on November 29th – International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Organised by the United Nations, the annual day of solidarity has been observed since the late 1970s. This year it saw a march through Belfast city centre; Sinn Fein led a bid to have the Palestinian flag fluttering from city hall on the same day, which Alliance backed.
After weeks of outcry, lawyers found procedural failures with the initial vote, overturning it. The flag didn’t fly on Saturday, but when the issue came back to the council on Monday night, Alliance were now against hoisting it over Belfast.
The party unsuccessfully tried to have city hall illuminated in Palestinian colours instead, voting against erecting the banner on the next available day. Unionists and Alliance were outnumbered by nationalists, the Greens and People Before Profit, resulting in the flag move passing again – though with a considerably smaller margin of victory.
Asked to explain the flip in position, an Alliance spokeswoman told the News Letter: “It is appropriate that the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people is recognised, to show compassion and empathy for the humanitarian situation in Gaza and across the region.
“Alliance proposed lighting civic buildings as an alternative way to achieve this. Given the sensitivities around flag policies, we felt this was the most appropriate, inclusive and unifying way forward.
“Such an approach is consistent with how councils have marked other international causes in the past, including expressing solidarity with the victims of the October 7th terrorist attacks and with the people of Ukraine. However, we were disappointed that our proposal to show solidarity was not supported by other parties.”