The West Bank settlement of Ariel is to be twinned on Wednesday with Bisho, capital of the puppet state of Ciskei, even though Israel and the rest of the world, apart from South Africa, does not recognize that country set up by South Africa as an African “homeland.”
Ciskei’s President Lennox Sebe is scheduled to arrive here tomorrow for an unofficial four or five day visit which the Israel Foreign Ministry is unhappy with but cannot prevent as Sebe is coming on a South African passport.
The Foreign Ministry was not consulted by Ariel before the decision to twin with the Ciskei capital. It is not known whether any Cabinet ministers and prominent Israelis will accept Ariel’s invitation to attend the twinning ceremony. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the arrangement with Ciskei’s capital “is not to our liking.”
Ariel spokesmen said they did not see any difference between their West Bank town twinning with Bisho and Haifa twinning with Cape Town some years ago.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
