(Ottawa) More than 30 Liberal, New Democrat and Green MPs have called on the prime minister to call for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in a letter signed by no MP from the Conservative Party or Bloc Québécois.
Liberal Salma Zahid, chair of the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Committee, made the open plea Friday public through a letter signed by 33 members of the House.
“Canada has been keeping the peace for too long. The longer the conflict continues, the more innocent victims it will cause,” we write in a letter addressed to Justin Trudeau.
“We call on Canada to join the ranks of countries calling for an immediate ceasefire. Canada must act to stop more children from being killed,” MEPs say.
The group of elected officials also wants Ottawa to do “everything in its power” to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.
They also urge Canada to “recognize that generations of Palestinians have suffered under Israeli occupation” and “reaffirm its commitment to the peaceful coexistence of an independent Palestinian state and an independent Israeli state.”
The letter shared by Salma Zahid on social networks is signed by 23 elected officials from the Liberal Party, 8 representatives of the New Democrats and 2 representatives from the Green Party in the House of Commons.
This is slightly less than 10% of all 338 federal representatives.
None of the 117 Conservatives and 32 Bloc members are part of the bloc.
An aide in Salma Zahid’s office said the letter was first circulated within a friendship group.
“From there, members shared the letter with other caucus colleagues who were not in the friendship group. The alliance includes constituency MPs, but none have signed up. “There are no Conservative MPs in the friendly group,” he explained.
Liberal factions
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday did not deny there were differences within his team.
“People are scared, people are angry, people are worried,” he argued, precisely because the delegation is in Ottawa.
The role of parliamentarians is to reflect the concerns and beliefs of their communities.
Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
“But our responsibility is to listen to each other, to work together and to make sure we remember who we are as Canadians,” Justin Trudeau said.
Liberal representatives of the Muslim and Jewish faiths also exchanged their perspectives on the war in the chamber of Parliament on Thursday evening.
“Destroy Hamas”?
The prime minister on Friday also reiterated Ottawa’s “firm and unwavering” position in support of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He did not want to echo the words used by Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, who called for the destruction of Hamas in a speech in Ottawa on Wednesday evening.
Photo by Sean Kilpatrick, Canadian Press Archives
Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Ray
Referring to the terrorist group’s “systematic and brutal brutality,” he said, “Any organization like this [devait] will be destroyed,” according to one speech Toronto Star Published extracts.
“Is this the position of your government? “, a journalist asked Justin Trudeau on Friday.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization and the Canadian government has considered it for years, decades even,” the prime minister responded.
And he affirmed that the Hebrew state had the right to “defend itself in accordance with international law” in response to “one of the worst terrorist attacks in history against civilians.”
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