Kate Khair is a DNTA committee member from Bethlehem. She is currently studying for MA in Intellectual History at St Andrews.
She has recently published an article on the twinning between Dundee and Nablus on the Woven Together Dundee website.
Below we reprint the first part of her article. The whole article is available here on the Woven Together Dundee website.
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.
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.
To read the rest of Kate’s article go to the Woven Together Dundee website