In a joint statement with its G7 allies, the UK and France, earlier this week, Canada co-signed unusually strong language targeted at Israel, calling Gaza’s suffering “intolerable” and Israel’s minimal aid allotment “wholly inadequate”.
It also called out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel as “wholly disproportionate” and “egregious”.
Israel has killed 54,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a figure deemed a major undercount by The Lancet medical journal.
The three countries said they “will not stand by” in regards to Gaza, and will “not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions” when it comes to Israeli settler attacks and the torching and bulldozing of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
The statement’s impact went so far as to elicit a response from Hamas, which called it an “important step towards restoring the principles of international law”, which they said was being undermined by the “terrorist government of Netanyahu”.
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On Wednesday, four Canadians were part of a delegation with European counterparts on a visit to the occupied West Bank when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. In response, Canada demanded a full investigation and an immediate explanation, calling it “totally unacceptable”. Israel said it “regrets the inconvenience”.
While French President Emmanuel Macron has long been the most critical of the three, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suspended trade negotiations with Israel this week and rolled out sanctions on leading voices in the Israeli settler movement.
Canada, on the other hand, has offered rebukes before, but it has largely tried not to upset Israel’s foremost backer on its southern border: the United States.
“Let’s acknowledge that Canada is a middle power on this, certainly with respect to the Middle East and Israel,” Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor and the former United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, told Middle East Eye.
However, he added that he had “not seen that language coming from Canada for a long time. In fact, probably ever”.
A former senior Canadian government official who asked not to be identified also told MEE that this is “a new tone that we had not seen”.
Why now?
Ottawa has generally looked to Washington to set the direction for its response to events that transpire in the Middle East.
The Israel-Palestine file, in particular, is handled delicately because it evokes a very strong reaction from the public on both sides, the former government official told MEE.
But now, not only has there been a crippling two-month siege imposed by Israel on Gaza that followed the devastation of almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure, there’s also new leadership in Canada – and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s background as an economist, not a politician, has largely lent itself to the directness of most of his remarks.
“It may well be given how critical the humanitarian catastrophe is right now, that Mark Carney has simply risen to the moment with respect to this,” Lynk said. “I don’t think he carries all of the political baggage like [his predecessor] Justin Trudeau does, particularly in his relationship to mainstream and right-wing pro-Israel organisations in Canada.”
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Carney had never run in any election before the one held last month, where his Liberal Party secured minority government status. He had been governor of the Bank of England as well as the Bank of Canada.
He has since made it clear that he sees Canada as closer to its European allies than to the US, which has seemingly pushed Canadians away with talk of making the country “the 51st state”, as well as President Donald Trump initiating a trade war between the two countries.
“Canada has never done by half measures what it could do by quarter measures,” Lynk explained. “It’s been laggard with respect to pushing Israel [into] obeying international law and obeying UN resolutions… the real test will be the use of strong, strong action.”
When Canada does take a stand, it has almost always done so in tandem with international partners as a general rule of its foreign policy approach, the government official told MEE, adding that “Canada doesn’t stand alone when it speaks up”.
“I’m sure that the statement made on Monday is in part because they wanted political cover by having France and the United Kingdom join them,” Lynk said.
The US consideration
Israel’s 19-month-long war on Gaza has been deemed a plausible genocide by the International Court of Justice, and an outright genocide by a number of human rights organisations, including Amnesty International.
While only the US has the leverage with Israel to enact a ceasefire, Trump has in many ways chosen to carve his own “America First” path by, at times, sidelining Israel, including in his direct dealings with Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran in just the last month alone.
Canada’s bolder rhetoric “sends a message to the United States and Israel that Canada, alongside other countries in the international community, will no longer just stand on the sidelines,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director for Democracy for the Arab World Now, told MEE.
Trump’s recent acts of “decoupling” from Israel might have also given US allies room to be more critical, Jarrar said.
“Historically, US allies were very hesitant… because they knew that they’re going to pay the price, not only with Israeli retaliation, but with US retaliation.”
But now, Gaza is in “dire straits” that cannot be ignored, and while pro-Israel lobbying groups have significant sway in Canada, “they do not have the final word”, the former official told MEE.
“The Canadian political system has a lot of checks and balances about the importance of money and donations. So it’s not like the US, where it’s almost a free-for-all,” the former official explained.
For now, all those MEE spoke to agreed that follow-through is imperative.
“There is definitely a need for action in Gaza, not just because Palestinians deserve protection and Palestinians deserve to eat,” Jarrar said. “It is about international law and order. The whole concept of international peace that was created after World War II is on the line.”
That post-World War II order is most notably characterised by the establishment of the United Nations, of which Canada was a founding member. It also still maintains funding for Unrwa, the UN relief agency for Palestinians.
