‘Israel’ must cease settlement activities to avoid conflict with Palestinians, says Canadian FM
Ottawa – Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau has said that Israel’s building of settlements, evictions, demolitions in East Jerusalem should be ceased to ease tensions and prevent another round of violence in the region.
“From Canada’s perspective, it was important as a friend to Israel that we get the message across that the continued building of settlements and the evictions and demolitions in east Jerusalem should cease,” he said, as he spoke to reporters at the end of a five-day tour of the Middle East.
“That is potentially provocative at a time when we want to lower the temperature and not provide any excuse for it to flare up again,” he added.
Today, I spoke to humanitarian partners. We discussed the impact of recent conflict on #Palestinians, especially women and children, and reconstruction efforts in #Gaza. I thanked them for their crucial work and conveyed our commitment to supporting humanitarian efforts in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/di2fpUaOGf
— Marc Garneau (@MarcGarneau) July 5, 2021
He also said he encouraged Palestinian leaders to conduct elections as soon as possible, as the elections were delayed in April 2021.
“We feel that it is very important for the democratic process and the fact that many Palestinians would like to vote, and many, many Palestinians have never voted in their life because the last elections were so long ago,” he said.
“And this is an opportunity for them to express themselves democratically.”
“Our long-standing position has been that ultimately the best long solution is two states for two people,” Garneau said.
“We have always advocated for that. [But] that is over the horizon at this immediate time… We need a cooling-off period so that if the temperature goes down, we can start thinking of ways we can look for that long-term solution.”
