Settlers starting campaign against pre-September 'panic'

The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria wants you – to chill out.

That’s the message that the council will be delivering in an Internet campaign starting next week to counter messages from the Left that have suggested that the UN General Assembly will be able to create a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines in September.

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The council will be distributing facts about the General Assembly vote in December 1988 that endorsed Yasser Arafat’s declaration of a state, which was supported by 104 countries and opposed only by Israel and the United States while 36 countries abstained.

The campaign will note that 88 countries recognized a Palestinian state back then, but such a state does not exist to this very day, and the Jews living over the Green Line have not been forced to leave their homes.

“Unfortunately, 90 percent of Israelis are unaware that a Palestinian state has been declared and recognized for 23 years,” council director-general Naftali Bennett said.

“The belief that a Palestinian state is inevitable is based on a false assumption that the UN can create such a state in four months. The Left is trying to scare Israelis into creating a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel.”

The campaign will criticize Defense Minister Ehud Barak for warning the public of a “diplomatic tsunami” in March, despite knowing that the United States would veto in the Security Council the creation of a Palestinian state that could be hostile. The Security Council is the only UN body with operative power to create a state.

The settlers’ council will also demand that the government respond to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of a state by annexing Area C in Judea and Samaria, where 100% of the West Bank’s Jews live and only 3% of the Arabs. Ministers Uzi Landau, Moshe Kahlon, Yuli Edelstein, and Yisrael Katz have endorsed taking such action. A pro-annexation rally will be held at the Knesset later this month.

“If we annex Area C, there would be no occupation or apartheid, so the world wouldn’t have anything to complain about,” Bennett said.

“It wouldn’t create a demographic problem because the number of Arabs there is so small. The Arabs who live there would be overjoyed to become Israeli citizens,” he said.