While Glasgow City Council has made known its feelings about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza by flying the Palestinian flag, it has been less forthcoming about its award in June of a major security surveillance contract to NICE, an Israeli multinational company.

The contract is for a Physical Security Information Management system used in the city's Operations Centre, a showcase facility bringing together public space CCTV, along with the traffic control centre. "NICE supplied software that manages those feeds and allows operators to identify and respond to incidents," the council's spokesman said. A spokesman for NICE (nearly $1billion in global turnover) assured us the company has no links to the Israeli Defence Force, but this may not be enough to please the harder line "boycott Israel" lobby among those celebrating Glasgow's "gesture of solidarity with Glasgow's twin city of Bethlehem". Glasgow is braced to resist any pressure to cancel the deal "We have no plans to review this", the city's spokesman said.