An Israeli soldier takes up a position next to a damaged car that is piled up with concrete as protection for Israeli soldiers next to UNRWA headquarters where the military discovered tunnels underneath the U.N. agency that the military says Hamas militants used to attack its forces during a ground operation in Gaza, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly made it clear within minutes of the passage of the NDP's motion on Israel and the Gaza war that the government didn't regard it as just another non-binding opposition day motion that could be swiftly forgotten.An Israeli soldier takes up a position next to a damaged car that is piled up with concrete as protection for Israeli soldiers next to UNRWA headquarters in Gaza on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024.
That extensive rewrite changed or toned down much of the substance of the original motion, and completely removed its most controversial clause — the one calling for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, a move already taken by 139 other countries. Neither one that night mentioned one of the few clauses in the deal that was not heavily rewritten during negotiations.
Kersten said that, according to what he's heard about the negotiations, the Liberals were reluctant to allow those clauses to go through. Kersten said that while the Trudeau government's policy may have been intended to shield Israeli officials from legal accountability, it also has the effect of opposing the prosecution of leaders of Hamas for their well-documented war crimes against Israelis — effectively placing the entire conflict under an umbrella of legal impunity that is the opposite of the rules-based international order the government says it supports.
"This would be completely in violation of what the Liberal Party has promised in 2015, 2019, in 2021," he told CBC News, "which is that Canada would be an ally of Israel and that our policy would be no different than the Conservatives with respect to Israel, other than the fact that we wouldn't make this a wedge issue.
"It's very significant not because Canada sells a lot of weapons to Israel. We're limited to about $20 million a year — very little," Kafieh told CBC News.about it, is that Israel is in a full panic because this essentially gives permission for other western allies that have historically aided and abetted Israel to take similar action. And that's the beginning of censure, the beginning of holding Israel accountable to international laws.
Colt's subsidiary Colt Canada manufactures small arms for the Canadian Forces and was expected to supply some of the Israeli contract.from Israel that the rifles would not be given out to civilians or settlers as part of a large gun-giveaway program under the auspices of Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Jewish Power Party.
As for Palestinian statehood, recognition was replaced with the language that has guided Canadian policy through decades of Liberal and Conservative governments — language that leaves it up to the two parties to negotiate a division of the land."Even if people made good faith efforts to support it," he said, "fundamentally you have Palestinians who are a subject people in a room with the Israelis who dominate them.
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