Kiryat Gat Mayor Aviram Dahari issued an apology and vowed to remove dozens of signs posted across the city on Tuesday depicting a map of Israel excluding Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights.
The signs, showing a map of Israel with the pre-1967 borders alongside the text "Kiryat Gat – Israel's New Center!", were posted by the municipality as part of a citywide PR campaign.
The signs were first noticed by the pro-Israel watchdog organization, Im Tirtzu, which launched an email petition encouraging its more than 230,000 Facebook followers to demand that the city fix the signs.
Several hours later, Kiryat Gat Mayor Aviram Dahari issued an apology on the municipality's official Facebook page.
"Dear Im Tirtzu, I would like to thank you for drawing our attention to the issue of the map of the Land of Israel that appeared on signs throughout the city," wrote Dahari.
"The Land of Israel, the land of our forefathers that our ancestors dreamed of, includes all the parts that you mentioned in your letter. With God's help we will fix the signs accordingly."
The mayor later fulfilled his promise and new signs were hung across the city with a fixed map of the Land of Israel.