The campaign, launched under the slogan “Border. Security. Peace. A Palestinian state is good for Israel!”, advocates a regional agreement in the Middle East to “end the war, bring home the hostages, normalise relations with moderate Arab states, and resolve the conflict based on the principle of two states for two peoples.”

“We must face reality. A Palestinian state will be established. The world already recognises it alongside Israel and supports a political solution, so does most of the Israeli public,” ‘Peace Now’ said.

A ‘Peace Now’ spokesman said the campaign will be conducted in Israel and New York, near the UN headquarters, where countries such as France, Canada and Belgium plan to recognise Palestinian statehood on the eve of the UN General Assembly next week.

‘Peace Now’, founded in 1978 in the wake of efforts to reach a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, said a demilitarised Palestinian state is the best guarantee of Israel’s security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once supported the idea of a two-state solution, which envisions a Palestinian state coexisting peacefully alongside Israel, for this reason too, but has since distanced himself from the idea.

His government firmly rejects the proposal, arguing that a Palestinian state would endanger Israel’s existence and reward the Islamist organisation Hamas after its attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.

It says the narrow borders of Israel’s heartland without the occupied West Bank would make the state strategically too vulnerable.

Ultra-right ministers are pushing to annex large parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The right-wing religious government also says that Palestinian independence was given a chance with Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Hamas, which violently seized control of the coastal territory in 2007, also rejects a two-state solution, wanting to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic state on the territory of historic Palestine.

(www.crestnewsonline.ng)