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Canada Stands by the U.S. in its Support of Genocide

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: June/July 2024 – Vol. XLIII #4

Bob Rae, Canada’s United Nations ambassador, recently stated that:
“…the ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the {Gaza] war lies with the parties who are fighting.’” In so stating, Mr. Rae, a former Rhodes Scholar, ignores the United States’ pivotal role in providing Israel with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Of course, Rae’s rhetoric reflects official Canada’s deference to U.S. Middle East policy.

This superpower backing facilitates Israel’s indifference to international law on the matter of territorial seizure, occupation, settlement and resource extraction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights. Therefore, all Palestinian negotiators face the combined force of the U.S. and Israel who together, reserve the right to define peace.

A bolder Rae might highlight the lost promise of the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative. This proposal from the major Arab states offered the “…establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for the…full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338…”

It seems that Bob Rae and Canada’s government remain willing to pretend that the so-called peace process is something other than Israel’s cynical delaying tactic designed to annex all valuable Palestinian territory.

Under the circumstances, why should Palestinians meekly accept Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and believe that these and future settlements are not part of an established Israeli policy of isolation and incremental annexation?

Perhaps Bob Rae might consider the notion that a bi-national state in Palestine with equal rights for Jews, Muslims, Christians and others is the only fair arrangement. In fact, it is probably inevitable.

Morgan Duchesney
Ottawa Canada