Israeli annexation, Canadian confusion
By David Kattenburg June 3, 2020 – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2020/06/israeli-annexation-canadian-confusion
Ambassadors to Israel from the European Union (EU) and a dozen member states have warned that annexation would spell an end to the ‘Two-State Solution’, something they insist is not dead, and that’s essential to regional “peace and security.” So have EU heavyweights Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson, who even invoked the ‘A-Word’. “What we are saying is that you have to have a two-state solution or else you have a kind of apartheid system,” Johnson warned, in a 2017 conversation with the Jerusalem Post.
In contrast, Canada’s Justin Trudeau – avowed champion of the “rules-based international order” in other situations (e.g. Russia’s annexation of Crimea) — has been slow off the mark. Fifty former Canadian diplomats and Foreign Affairs ministers, leading church groups and Canadian Friends of Peace Now urged him to do so. Finally, on June 2, in the midst of a media conference on Covid-19 and American unrest, someone popped the question.
“We are firm in our commitment to a two-state solution as a country,” Trudeau replied. “I have highlighted both publicly and directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu and alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz the importance of staying away from measures that are unilateral, and our deep concerns and disagreements with their proposed policy of annexation.”
Canada is “very concerned that Israel moving forward with unilateral annexation would be damaging to peace negotiations and contrary to international law,” a Foreign Affairs spokesperson told CBC.
Really? Canada’s long-standing, avowedly ironclad trade and economic relationship with Jewish settlements in the occupied/colonized Palestinian territories tells a different story. Before going into the details, the legal gravity of Israel’s actions is worth emphasizing.