Djapic said on Wednesday that he believed that this campaign against his visit to Israel was launched by "enemies of the HSP and the Republic of Croatia".
Djapic convened an extraordinary press conference in Osijek on Wednesday to inform that he had received a letter from the local authorities of Ariel that notified him that they had decided to cancel his trip.
Djapic said that the initiative for the visit of Osijek's delegation to Ariel had been launched by Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman.
According to the Osijek Mayor, Nachman "yielded to pressure exerted by those who are burdened by prejudices and suspicious intentions and who launched the entire campaign against me personally and the party at whose helm I am, in a bid to slow down the process of the HSP's coming in power."
Djapic also refuted accusations levelled against him such as that he had anti-Semitic views.
According to the Croatian press, Ephraim Zuroff, the head of the Israeli Simon Wiesenthal centre has said that Djapic is not welcome in Israel as he is "an extremist and anti-Semite".
Responding to these accusations, Djapic said that "he has never been an anti-Semite", and wondered who of anti-Semitic politicians would plan a twinning charter of his town with an Israeli town.
This is untruth based on prejudices promoted by enemies of the HSP and the Republic of Croatia who launched the campaign against my visit to Ariel, sending hundreds of e-mails to Mayor Nachman, Djapic said.
He added that he had condemned the Holocaust "as the gravest crime in the history of humanity" and that he had recently helped the restoration of a Jewish monument in Osijek's suburb of Tenja, at a place of a former detention centre for Jews in World War Two.
The chief-of-staff of the Osijek Mayor's Office, Goran Trdin, said that a special advisor to the HSP leader, Mate Granic, had recently met Israeli Ambassador in Zagreb and reported after the meeting that the Israeli government had nothing against Djapic's visit to Israel. Trdin explained that Zuroff is a representative of a nongovernmental organisation and his standpoints are not an official position of the Israeli government.
The head of the Jewish community in Osijek, Damir Lajos, said that he was disappointed with what he had read in the press about Djapic being not welcome in Israel.
"This news has unpleasantly surprised us as we in the Jewish community have discussed (Djapic's) trip and the twinning of the two cities, Israeli Ariel and Croatian Osijek and we have supported such cooperation," Lajos told Hina on Wednesday.
He added that the Jewish community had established excellent cooperation with Mayor Djapic and that he had helped renovated the memorial plaque in Tenja.