Ad campaign fuels tension

BETHLEHEM: Former senior Israeli defence officials have rolled out a massive ad campaign in Israel “warning” Israelis of a single state with a Palestinian majority if the two-state solution was not implemented as the end goal in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The former officials are members of a group known as the Commanders for Israel’s Security consisting of “about 200 former top officials from the country’s security services dedicated to the two-state solution”, according to the Times of Israel.

The campaign featured pictures of Palestinian crowds referred to as a “Palestinian mob”, overlaid with the caption: “Soon we will be the majority,” written in Arabic, and “Palestine: One state for two people” in English.

The ads reference the growing Palestinian population, which is projected to reach 7.13million by the end of 2020, compared with 6.96 million Jews in “historical Palestine” – meaning the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Israel – according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

The campaign featured in fullpage ads in two of Israel’s newspapers and billboards across the country, the Times of Israel reported.

Palestinian lawmakers inside Israel slammed the campaign, which was reportedly intended to promote the two-state solution and to oppose right-wing calls to annex large swathes of occupied West Bank, calling it racist.

Israeli MP Ayman Odeh posted a statement on Facebook saying: “This isn’t a peace campaign, but rather a hatred campaign against Arabs.