12 photos removed from Israeli exhibition in Mexico

By Burak Bir

ANKARA (AA) - Mexico City's metro on Friday partially canceled an Israeli exhibition that featured the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank as part of Israel, a Palestinian activist group said.

Twelve photographs were removed from the “A look at Israel” exhibition sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in the metro, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement said on its website.

Mexico City asked for the photographs to be removed after almost 40 Mexican organizations, unions, networks and diplomatic missions from Palestine, the Arab world and member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) raised concern.

The city administration took down the pictures after being notified that they featured images of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank as part of Israel.

"These territories are subject to Israel’s brutal military occupation. According to the resolution 242 of the United Nations Security Council, passed in 1967, these territories are considered occupied and therefore do not belong to Israel," BDS said.

The BDS movement works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law, according to the group’s official website.

U.S. President Donal Trump signed a proclamation March 21 that officially recognized the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

Israel occupies roughly two-thirds of the wider Golan Heights as a de facto result of the 1967 Middle East war. It moved to formally annex the territory in 1981 -- an action unanimously rejected at the time by the UN Security Council.

Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Middle East conflict, with Palestinians hoping East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, might one day serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.