‘Palestine is not for sale’
Touring in Canada, Israeli promotion of West Bank land draws protest
Rival protesters faced off on Thursday outside a synagogue north of Toronto, where a touring Israeli real estate exhibition promoting land for purchase in the occupied West Bank was making its final Canadian stop.
A York Regional Police officer with binoculars stood on the roof of the synagogue in the community of Thornhill, watching dozens of protesters below him who were waving Israeli flags on one side and Palestinian flags on the opposite side of the street.
On the steps of the synagogue where the Great Israeli Real Estate Event was being hosted, demonstrators played pop music, danced and chanted “Israel is a Jewish land.” Across the street, protesters chanted “Palestine is not for sale” and called for the exhibition inside the synagogue to be shut down.
An online brochure for the event said speakers at the exhibition were addressing questions about purchasing real estate in several locations, including Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Palestinian protesters at Thursday’s event said they were deeply concerned the list also includes Neve Daniel, Efrat and Ma’ale Adumim, which are all communities in the West Bank, a territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and has occupied since. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal. The settlements are built on land that Palestinians seek as part of a future state, and the Canadian government says they “constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”
At the back entrance to the synagogue, a parking lot slowly filled up with cars Thursday afternoon, as members of the Jewish community trickled into the event under heavy security.
A Canadian Press reporter who registered for the event was told by a security guard outside the venue that media would not be allowed in.
A pro-Israel protester who did not want to be named said he was joining others to condemn the Oct. 7 incursions launched by Hamas in southern Israel that killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and touched off the Israel-Hamas war that has now raged for nearly five months.
Palestinian Canadian Ghada Sasa was at Thursday’s pro-Palestinian protest after attending a similar one on Sunday. In an interview Sunday, she said she “broke down and started crying” when she found out about the real estate event, calling it “unbelievable and horrific.”
“They’re here to steal Palestinian land right under our nose. How dare they sell this land in Canada. It’s disgusting,” added Sasa, a PhD candidate at McMaster University, who said her grandfather was forced from his home during the war that surrounded Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe.
More than 500,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank, alongside about three million Palestinians.