Ten deputy ambassadors from around the world and several senior U.N. officials visited Barkan Industrial Park in Samaria on Friday, as part of a joint program seeking to showcase the park as a prominent example of successful Israeli-Palestinian economic cooperation.
The program is the brainchild of the Shomron Regional Council’s Foreign Relations Department, together with the Judea and Samaria Chamber of Commerce.
The tour took place as part of the council’s public diplomacy efforts, which are backed by the Strategic Affairs Ministry.
The ministry is tasked with spearheading Israel’s efforts to counter the BDS movement.
The U.N. delegation met with Shomron Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who briefed the dignitaries on the area’s adamant struggle to counter the attempts to boycott and delegitimize businesses in Judea and Samaria.
The delegation also visited the Alon Group facility in the park, which last month was the scene of a gruesome terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of 29-year-old Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and 35-year-old Ziv Hajbi, as well as the wounding of 54-year-old Sara Vaturi.
“As we have built coalitions in the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament, we continue to work to create coalitions to support Judea and Samaria at the United Nations as well,” said Dagan.
“I have no doubt that anyone who visits us and sees and understands reality as it is. Today, we met with senior U.N. officials who said they were happy to learn about the daily reality in Samaria, as they knew little about it before [the visit]. We will continue to act to influence opinion leaders from around the world.”
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan noted that “BDS activities against Judea and Samaria are just a cover story for their activists’ real objective—boycotting the entire State of Israel and eliminating it as a Jewish state. This is why it is so important to us to counter these boycott attempts and show the world the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in Judea and Samaria.”
