Peace Now Calls for Boycott of Gush Etzion Jubilee Party

Jerusalem, 25 September, 2017 (TPS) -- Peace Now has called on members of the parliamentary opposition to boycott an event in Gush Etzion Wednesday celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War.

In an open letter to MKs posted on the group’s Facebook page, members said ‘the very essence of the event undermines the two state solution’.

“We’re calling on all peace-seeking elected officials, who support the two state solution, not to take part in this inappropriate celebration and to denounce it. We shouldn’t legitimize an event celebrating the occupation and oppression of another people,” the letter said.

Organizers say the event, to be held outside the town of Alon Shvut adjacent to the Gush Etzion Junction, will mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Judea and Samaria from Jordanian rule during the Six Day War of June 1967.Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, government ministers, MKs and leaders of the settlement movement and other officials are scheduled to attend.

But Peace Now said the anniversary of the 1967 war is nothing to celebrate.

“The event will commemorate 50 years of settling in Judea & Samaria, but in reality, it will be celebrating 50 years of military control over millions of Palestinians.’ the letter read, ‘During the ceremony, to be held in Gush Etzion, an area not under Israeli sovereignty, the right wing government will commemorate and praise the settlement movement, which endangers the entire Zionist vision, as well as Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state.

“A official state event outside of Israel’s sovereign borders is yet another stage in Netanyahu’s crawling annexation policy. The Israeli government chose to violate state and international law in order to de-facto legalize annexation’.

In response the the letter, Oded Revivi, head of the Yesha Council foreign desk and mayor of Efrat, said the left-wing group has slipped outside the Israeli consensus in favor of a radical agenda supported only by the Meretz and Joint Arab List parties. He also said the group has lost its connection with the spiritual fathers of the Labor Zionist movement.

Some foreign officials, including Emanuele Giaufret, the EU’s ambassador to Israel, have said they will not attend the event.The ambassador’s office said “the ambassador will not attend any official events of the State of Israel over the Green Line.”

Responding to the EU’s declination of the invitation, Shlomo Neeman, head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council stated, “We wish to see ourselves as an integral and inseparable part of the state of Israel. I am far less interested in being a part of the EU. I invite the Europeans to invest the bulk of their efforts in fixing their heritage of hatred and harming others. We could have taught them something about that at the event, but it seems they chose otherwise.’