Minister rules out resettling Palestinian refugees
OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said Sunday Canada will not get involved in resettling Palestinian refugees displaced by the expansion of controversial Israeli settlements.
“We are not going to resettle in Canada ... the hundreds of thousands who want to live in a Palestinian state because they want to go home eventually,” Alexander told CTV’s Question Period. “That is the objective we will be working toward under the leadership of the (United Nations Refugee Agency) and with our friends, allies and partners.”
The remarks are an apparent reversal of Canada’s official position on the decades-old territorial dispute between Israel and Palestine, in which it has offered Canada as a home for some of the refugees displaced to make way for Israeli territories. Asked if that was still the case, Alexander said: “With respect to Palestinian refugees, the objective we all share is for them to become citizens in a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution.”
The minister’s comments came the same day Prime Minister Stephen Harper landed in Israel with a sizable delegation.
Before leaving Canada, Harper’s office had deflected questions over whether the prime minister agrees with Canada’s long-standing foreign policy regarding Israeli-occupied territories on Palestinian lands as illegitimate.
Alexander defended the government’s response on Sunday. “It isn’t for Canada or other countries to use or impose their own views on these two parties that have to resolve these issues together,” he said.
Alexander said the Canadian government does not support unilateral action on either side of the conflict, adding that Harper’s trip to Israel is intended to underline “65 years of strong relations that Canada has had with a very successful democracy ... that is a model in the Middle East.”
“We want to work with our Israeli partners to find solutions to the security issues that represent threats to the region and indeed the world.”
Michael Bell, former Canadian ambassador to Israel and Jordan, said the government’s refusal to articulate Canada’s official foreign policy regarding the settlements along the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — captured by Israel in the 1967 war — may signal the prime minister is planning to change this country’s official stance.