The time for words is long past. It is time to act
The people of Gaza had been under bombardment for nearly 20 months, experiencing terror, displacement, maiming and death without end. Their means of survival were wiped out. Because of the blockade, there was a critical risk of famine. It was at this point that, on May 18, Israel launched a ground invasion with the stated aim of corralling the population into just 20 percent of the territory and completing the destruction of the remaining civilian infrastructure, leaving Palestinians “nowhere to return to.” On May 21, Benjamin Netanyahu added the implementation of the “Trump plan” to his demands: the expulsion of the Palestinians and US control of the Gaza Strip.
On May 19, Canada issued a joint statement with France and the UK in which it took a much stronger tone towards Israel, demanding that Israel allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza and end its latest offensive, and threatening “further concrete actions” and “targeted sanctions.” But these are just words. The time for words is long past: it is time to act.
There is now an acute emergency, but the issue isn’t Israel allowing aid to enter at this time or halting its current offensive. As some 40 UN special rapporteurs and experts stated on May 8, the nations of the world stand before a fateful choice: “end the unfolding genocide or watch it end life in Gaza.”
For over 30 years, Canada has supported the “peace process” that Israel has used as a cover to openly and with impunity escalate its violence and pursue the dispossession of the Palestinian people, culminating in the current genocide in Gaza. Since October 2023, we have been witnessing not a “wholly disproportionate” escalation in response to the Hamas attack, as the joint statement says, but the implementation, already well advanced, of Israel’s plan to seize the moment and forever eliminate any prospect of a state for the Palestinian people on its land. (more...)
For the Palestinian people, it is one minute to midnight: Canada must radically change its approach
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