When it comes to Israel, Gerry Caplan writes, Justin Trudeau's policy is the same as Stephen Harper's policy. Do nothing to annoy Benjamin Netanyahu:
The new government’s policy towards Israel and Palestine, as articulated by the G-G, just happens to be identical to the old government’s policy. Canada may be back, but in the Middle East it’s Stephen Harper’s Canada that is back. And both governments’ stands are curious given that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly said he will never accept an independent Palestinian state. Everyone but Canadian governments seems well aware of this.
Trudeau says he is for a two state solution. But that's empty rhetoric. Meanwhile, things keep getting worse for the Palestinians:
The unjust status quo continues to be steadily reinforced. Constantly increasing numbers of Israeli settlers have moved into Palestinian lands that Israel has been occupying for fully half a century. In the past decade or so, their number has increased from 249,000 to 370,000. These “facts on the ground” give settlers ever-greater influence in the centres of Israeli power and leave the Palestinian West Bank, says [Roger] Cohen, a collection of “countless little self-administering enclaves … broken up by Israeli settlers.” There are in actuality 165 of these separate little Palestinian islands.
Netanyahu has vowed he will never agree to force those settlers off Palestinian lands, nor can President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, effectively an Israeli collaborator, accept a Palestine that is not viable.The reality is that it is madness to imply any kind of equivalence between the two entities. Israel is a normal, thriving independent western nation, except that it receives many billions in “aid” from foreign governments, especially the United States, and its neighbours cause it occasional anxiety.
Barbara Ehrenreich has chronicled the plight of Palestinians:
Ehrenreich paints a haunting picture of injustices repeatedly perpetrated by Israelis against Palestinians. Every day, some Palestinians defy the latest form of oppression, mostly by unarmed resistance, and usually they lose. Most Israelis are unaware this rite even takes place.It’s David versus Goliath, but, this time, the giant Goliath is an Israeli, and the victor. As Ehrenreich watches, his Palestinian friends, together with their possessions, are humiliated, terrorized, abused, insulted, evicted, demolished, confiscated, dispossessed, expropriated, beaten, wounded or killed by Goliath, and imprisoned, often in solitary confinement (which means torture) for long stretches.
Increasingly, the world is stalked not by giants but by bullies. Can -- and will -- Trudeau stand up to them?
