WATCH: Palestinian flag adorns high-rise in heart of Tel Aviv business district

Following an uproar, the Palestinian flag is being taken down.

A video circulating on Israeli social media on Wednesday morning showed a giant Palestinian flag displayed alongside an Israeli flag on the exterior of a building in a major business district in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Above the two flags is written, in Hebrew and in Arabic, “We are destined to live together.”

It was in fact a political statement aimed at challenging an upcoming Knesset vote to ban the Palestinian flag from Israeli university campuses on the heels of a number of violent incidents commemorating what the anti-Israel element refers to as Nakba Day (Arabic for ‘Day of Catastrophe’) on the anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel.

The narrator, speaking in Hebrew, curses and slams the Ramat Gan mayor for allowing it.

In fact, the mayor of Ramat Gan, Carmel Shama HaCohen, announced that if the sign was not removed, the municipality would hang huge flags of the State of Israel and “salute flags to the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Israel Police and the Border Police,” Hebrew-language Ynet reported.

“There is no law in the world that will eliminate the fact that two peoples live here, and there is no democracy that prohibits the hoisting of flags of a national minority that makes up more than 20 percent of the country’s citizens,” said Uri Cole, head of the “Machzikim (‘Strengthening’): Fighting for a Progressive Israel” movement that was responsible for putting up the flags.

“A legal examination revealed that in light of the ombudsman’s guidelines and rulings by the High Court, the sign is completely legal and protected within the limits of freedom of expression, but it still hurts the feelings of quite a few residents and allows extremists to ignite passions,” Shama HaCohen said.

Meanwhile, workers began taking down the Palestinian flag later in the day. However, an identical message with the two flags was posted in Nazareth, which has an almost-100% Arab population.

(Video courtesy blogger Amar Assadi)

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