'The fight goes on': Palestine flag to stay up as judge rejects injunction, but council's Belfast City Hall decision still to face court hearing
Unionists have vowed to fight on after a judge rejected an injunction that would have pulled down a Palestine flag from the top of Belfast City Hall.
The flag went up shortly after midnight today, after councillors voted to go ahead with it during a meeting on Monday evening.
The move split the council and passed by a majority of just four votes. It was pushed by nationalists, who originally wanted the flag to fly over Belfast during an international day of solidarity last weekend, but were thwarted when a challenge from unionists uncovered procedural failures with the original decision in early November.
Monday night’s vote prompted a legal challenge from unionists, with judge Mr Justice Michael Humphreys hearing arguments in Belfast High Court over the course of today.
The applicants had sought an interim injunction that would have required the flag to be taken down, pending a fuller court hearing on whether the council followed correct procedures in how the vote was held.
But that was turned down by the judge, leaving the flag up until around dusk.
The longer hearing is to begin on Friday next week, with TUV councillor Ron McDowell saying they hope to prove the council broke its legal objections by erecting the flag.
“Putting this up at midnight was a break with procedures,” he told the News Letter. “Usual practice, for example with the union flag on a Royal’s birthday, is dawn to dusk.
“We are disappointed the emergency injunction was rejected, but we are confident we will be able to prove the wider case. The fight goes on.”
Mr McDowell added that he’d spoken to members of the Jewish community who were appalled and offended by the council’s decision to fly the Palestinian flag.
“Some of them, and they weren’t making a decision but this is how they were talking, mentioned they would reconsider marking World Holocaust Day in city hall as a result of this,” he said. “That, I thought, was heart-breaking.”
This afternoon a small protest gathered outside Belfast’s High Court, bearing Israeli flags as well as banners containing biblical verses.
A 20-year-old man was arrested by police on suspicion of disorderly behaviour. A 45-year-old man, understood to be a prominent anti-immigration campaigner, and a 37-year-old woman were apprehended on allegations connected with offences thought to have taken place last month.
The Palestinian flag flew over the site of Belfast’s popular Christmas market throughout the day, including the city’s main Christmas tree plus festive decorations around city hall.
Shortly before the market opened in the morning, the flag hadn’t attracted much in the way of onlookers. The day didn’t bring much in the way of wind, so the banner mostly hung limply from city hall’s flagpost instead flying proudly in the breeze.
The main interest in it came from professional photographers, who gathered to grab photos for the media; passers-by largely didn’t bother to look at it, though a few were seen snapping pics for their own social media.
By and large most of the people in the area during the course of today were there for the Christmas market; indeed, the Palestine banner proved to generally be far less visible than, for example, an Italian flag flying from one of the continental food stalls.
Originally, Sinn Fein had pushed for the flag to fly on Saturday, a day that saw supporters of the Palestinian cause march though Belfast city centre.
But the move was halted at the eleventh hour, the council confirming last Friday that lawyers had found procedural failures with the original vote approving it. The problem, said a legal team analysing a unionist call-in of the issue, was that equality tests had been run after the vote, not before, so weren’t factored into politicians’ decision.
The issue came back before the council last night, with those equality tests to be factored in. The meeting saw Alliance unsuccessfully attempt to scrap the flag move in favour of lighting up city hall in Palestinian colours, pivoting from their initial support of erecting the flag in November to being against it on Monday evening.
Sinn Fein’s motion to raise the flag on the next available day was passed by 32 votes to 28, with council staff hoisting it several hours later.
Since then, insults have flown back and forth between unionists and nationalists, each accusing the other of trafficking in culture wars “stunt politics” over the flag.