Mícheál Mac Donncha was invited to visit the city of Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál Mac Donncha was able to enter Israel due to a typo by state authorities.
On Tuesday Israel announced that it had banned Mac Donncha from entering the country. On the same day, however, the Sinn Féin politician tweeted to confirm that he was in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
https://twitter.com/noa_landau/status/983797906753900544
https://twitter.com/LordMayorDublin/status/983802746766848000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fisrael-news%2Fisrael-bars-entry-of-dublin-s-mayor-over-bds-ties-1.5990796&tfw_site=haaretzcom
The Mayor was invited to Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority for a conference on the status of Jerusalem.
Entering the state through Tel Aviv,
according to national newspaper Haaretz, he was able to do so when an order issued by the Interior Ministry had not spelled his name as it appears on his passport.
"We made a mistake at the border crossing," a Ministry spokesperson told the paper.
Mac Donnacha was said to have received the ban due to his ties to the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which promotes the boycott of Israeli companies and any international companies that operate within the state.
The news comes one day after Dublin City Council voted in favour of economic sanctions against Israel.
The Dublin City Council motion called on the boycott of Israeli products, while also calling for the council to discontinue business contracts with Hewlett Packard, as the tech company supplies equipment to the Israeli military and security sectors.
The boycott comes following heightened tensions along the Gaza-Israel border, which saw nine Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the weekend. This comes during the second week of the 'March of Return', a series of protests calling for Palestinian refugees to be returned to their homes.
In a statement, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney called for "the utmost restraint", while also requesting Israeli authorities "to ensure that any force used is only as a last resort, and is proportionate to the circumstances. The number of people injured by live ammunition is very troubling, and I support calls by the EU and by the UN Secretary General for an independent and transparent investigation.
"As I have said very clearly in all my contacts in the region, the situation in Gaza is untenable. Most of the 1.9 million people there have never been allowed to leave this tiny area, and young Gazans are vulnerable to despair, without the possibility for normal ambitions and plans for the future," Coveney said.
