Tel Aviv - The mayor of Tel Aviv ordered
the removal on Friday of highway billboards that appeared to
call for the surrender at gunpoint of Palestinian leaders for
the sake of peace.
"Peace is made ONLY with defeated enemies," said the
billboards, which showed photo-shopped images of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh,
blindfolded and supplicating in a war-zone as helicopters hover.
Israel's stand-off with the Palestinians has grown newly
tense since last month's unveiling of U.S. President Donald
Trump's Middle East peace plan, which they rejected as biased.
It was not immediately clear who sponsored the billboards
around Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial capital, or if the campaign
was meant to help rightist parties in a March 2 national
election.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in a statement that the
billboards would be removed, saying that their image "incites
violence and recalls the actions of ISIS and the Nazis - whom we
do not want to counted among".
"Even in election season, there are red lines," he said.