There was little reason to believe after the city council meeting that Nelson, B.C., wouldn’t soon have a new Palestinian sister city.
During a Jan. 20 presentation at Nelson City Hall, a group spoke about the cultural and educational benefits that a formal relationship with the small Bedouin village of Ras al-Auja in the occupied West Bank might bring.
Council was receptive. One councillor voiced support before any questions had been asked. Another described what he said was wide community interest in the initiative. The mayor addressed the city’s lack of policy for sister cities by suggesting it wouldn’t impact the proposal.
No vote was held on the matter — that wouldn’t have happened until a later date — but as the group left council chamber there was visible optimism that its presentation was a success.
Less than a day later, that optimism vanished.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Jan. 22 that at least 75 families in Ras al-Auja, also known as Ras Ein al ‘Auja, had dismantled their homes and left due to Israeli settler violence, property damage, restricted pasture access and hundreds of stolen livestock.
Soon the village won’t exist at all. The remaining households, the U.N. said, “are assessed to be at imminent risk of displacement.”
Paul Szabo, one of the Nelson residents who formed the Ras al-Auja Sister City Friendship Group, said the news was unexpected despite a history of displacement in the West Bank.
“We have the first-world problem of we feel disappointed because we worked on this project. They have the third-world problem of packing up everything they own and demolishing their own houses and going where?”
Attacks against Palestinian communities in the West Bank have intensified since the Israel-Gaza War began in October 2023. The U.N. says Ras al-Auja suffered just two settler attacks between 2017 and 2023, but there were 74 total in 2024 and 2025.
In November 2025, a Nelson woman said she had been assaulted by Israeli settlers while serving as unarmed civilian protection for Palestinians in the village of Duyuk, which is less than an hour drive south of Ras al-Auja.
Szabo said the group’s goal was not to make a political statement about the West Bank. Instead, they were focused on establishing connections with the residents of Ras al-Auja.
“We’re trying to affirm a human dimension of a relationship with people there that still exists, but which has largely been obliterated from the discussion because every time you hear news it’s just suffering, war, genocide. Those things are present, but that’s not what our focus is.”
Nelson currently has four sister city relationships. The most prominent is with Izu-shi, Japan, which was formed in 1987 during Nelson’s economic downturn in what turned out to be a successful attempt at hosting hundreds of Japanese students.
In the decades that followed, the Nelson Izu-shi Friendship Society has created and maintained a Japanese garden, organized visits to Izu-shi and also hosted visitors. Izu-shi has done the same, and has even built a miniature village modelled after Nelson.
Xochilt Ramirez envisioned a similar partnership with Ras al-Auja. She shared a cookbook written by Palestinian chef Mona Zahed with city council, and hoped to host cooking sessions between families in both communities as well as story times.
“I think working with imagination and the creativity of the children, it can help us adults. I feel sometimes really heavy by how hard things are in the general landscape, but [children] give me energy.”
Ras al-Auja was suggested as a sister city last year by Nelson’s Mary Ann Morris. She and her husband Randy Janzen work in the West Bank with an international group that advocates for non-violent conflict resolution.
Since then, a sold-out dinner and thrift sale organized by the Ras al-Auja Sister City Friendship Group raised $16,000. Ramirez said turnout at both events showed community interest in Palestinian culture and issues.
“I think people wanted to find connection around the subject. They wanted to find ways to engage and get themselves more educated, but they didn’t know where to go.”
It’s not clear now what will happen with the group’s proposal. They may wait to see where the families of Ras al-Auja end up, or could work with a different Palestinian village.
Szabo, who has previously visited the West Bank as part of international development efforts, said he’s hopeful that a connection between communities will eventually be made.
“I think we have a moral responsibility to wonder about what the situation of other people is.”