On Oct. 29, the Knesset’s ministerial committee on legislation was scheduled to approve the proposed bill known as the Greater Jerusalem law, which would annex the West Bank settlements of Maale Adumim, Givat Zeev, Beitar Illit and the Etzion bloc settlements (including Efrat) to Jerusalem. Some 150,000 Israelis live in these towns and local councils.

The idea of annexing Israeli settlements adjacent to Jerusalem’s municipal borders in order to increase the city’s population and ensure its Jewish majority has been around for a decade. Back in 2007, Likud Party Knesset member Yisrael Katz put forth a similar proposal, which never took off due to concerns about harsh international and Palestinian reaction.

Concern that Jews will no longer constitute a majority in the Israeli capital within less than a decade — both due to the natural growth of the Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the negative immigration of secular Israeli Jews from the city — led former Minister Haim Ramon to launch a public movement in February 2016 to “save Jewish Jerusalem.” The group was comprised of a great number of defense experts, academics and activists on the political left and center. Ahead of the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations in 2016, the movement launched an extensive public campaign to warn complacent Israelis that unless preventive steps were taken soon, they would “wake up with a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem.”

The campaign resorted to various scare tactics, even enlisting a Hamas video clip showing incitement against Jews posted on social networks. However, its seemingly racist overtones led central supporters of the initiative, such as former Shin Bet security agency chief Ami Ayalon, to pull out.