Is the Joint Statement on Gaza Too Little, Too Late?

On May 19, Prime Minister Mark Carney, UK prime minister Keir Starmer, and French president Emmanuel Macron released a joint statement condemning Israel’s escalating military offensive against Gaza. In it, they threaten “concrete actions” if Israel doesn’t end its blockade of Gaza and halt its military campaign, which it resumed in mid-March after a two-month ceasefire. But what can a statement—however critical—accomplish? For more insights on what Canada and other countries can and should do to end the conflict, I spoke with Jon Allen, who served as this country’s ambassador to Israel from 2006 to 2010 and is now a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. This isn’t the first statement Canada has issued in response to Israel’s military campaign. What makes it different? I think this is one of the strongest statements that Canada, the United Kingdom, and France have made on the conflict. It recognizes Israel’s right to self-defence. It calls for the release of the hostages—it is critical of Hamas. And it then goes on to highlight three violations of international humanitarian law by Israel. It talks about Israel’s siege of Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis, which, when the joint statement was issued, had been ongoing for a little more than eleven weeks. It talks about members of the Israeli Knesset who have been advocating the displacement of 1.1 million Gazans from the north to the south—which would push 2.1 million Gazans into an area the size of about 20 percent of the Gaza Strip. And it talks about disproportionate attacks on innocent Gazans—women, children, the elderly. And it states that if the Israeli government and military don’t stop, then further actions will be contemplated. So it’s a clear rebuke. As far as I’m concerned, this should have happened a long time ago, but irrespective, it is a warning. And it goes on then, importantly, to reiterate a few other things. One, that there needs to be a “day after” plan for Gaza. It talks about the Egypt/Arab initiative, which, while not perfect, does plan for eventual Palestinian Authority governance in Gaza and bringing in huge amounts of humanitarian assistance, beginning reconstruction, and putting in place a technical government. The statement then reiterates the importance of a two-state solution, which is an essential element of the policy of all Western governments, including the Americans in the past. And then, something that’s new: it commits to recognizing a Palestinian state, notwithstanding the fact that Palestine’s borders aren’t fixed and that we don’t have peace in place. This essentially recognizes that Israel should not have a veto over such recognition and the two-state solution and Palestinians need a boost of hope. It talks very critically about the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal in international law, and some of the settlements are actually illegal under Israeli law as well. It warns of a response if that doesn’t stop. Canada has already sanctioned some settlers. The UK announced sanctions on settler organizations as well. And that’s an important step, because if you believe in the two-state solution, then the expansion of settlements is the greatest obstacle to that in a physical sense. If there’s no land left for the Palestinian state, then you’ve got a problem. So yes, it’s a significant statement. It’s hard hitting. We’ve seen follow-up by others. The German and Italian foreign ministers have spoken out. The European Union has indicated that its members will be looking at the current negotiations to enhance their free trade agreement with Israel and might look at other tools in their toolbox. And in the United States, the president himself has talked about starvation in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently phoned Benjamin Netanyahu three times, likely to encourage him to begin to open up the the flow of humanitarian aid. And US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff has been on the phone with Netanyahu as well. So there’s lots of pressure on the Netanyahu government right now.

• How Trudeau Turned Canadian Diplomacy into a Spectator Sport
• There’s a Path to Peace in Israel and Palestine
• How Casualty Counters Measure Deaths in Gaza

Most Western states have consistently expressed their support for Israel’s right to defend itself. Now there’s a shift toward calling its military actions disproportionate. What was the tipping point? I think the tipping point was really the Netanyahu government’s decision to break the ceasefire that began in mid-January. When the ceasefire was in place, hostages were being exchanged for Palestinian prisoners. Humanitarian assistance was flowing. In my opinion, the ceasefire was broken on March 18 for purely political reasons. It was broken because Netanyahu was concerned that his coalition government would fall apart. One of his Messianic far-right ministers had already resigned from the cabinet, and Netanyahu was concerned that if he didn’t resume the war, another would bolt and his coalition could fall apart. If that happened, he would have to face elections. He would have to face a state commission of inquiry into October 7 and his responsibility for it, and he would have to attend his trial on three criminal charges, full time, as opposed to now, when he is able to seek delays because he’s running the country. So for purely political reasons, in my view, the US-negotiated ceasefire was broken, and as a result, the hostages were deprioritized. Only one has since been released. By now, thousands more Palestinians have been killed, Israel Defense Forces soldiers are dying, and the humanitarian situation has become intolerable. An eleven-week siege: that’s collective punishment of innocent human beings. There was no military strategic reason for doing this. I’ll just remind you that a former minister of defence and a former chief of defence staff have said that eliminating Hamas is not possible. If eliminating Hamas is not possible, then any military actions being taken now, after nineteen months of fighting and the destruction of Hamas as an army, are to some extent disproportionate. Innocent people are being killed in an effort to do something that’s not possible. I have no doubt that foreign leaders who were speaking to Netanyahu to express their concerns weren’t getting the kinds of answers they were expecting or hoping for. So they finally said enough was enough and decided to act. One of the most pressing issues right now is getting aid into Gaza, and some of that has begun in the past week, though the United Nations says not enough is being distributed. Israel has argued that it’s concerned about looting and about aid reaching Hamas. Do you see any diplomatic avenue for resolving this issue, for lifting the blockade entirely? The most immediate possible avenue would be for the Americans—for Donald Trump and Witkoff and Rubio—to also say, “Enough is enough.” Ninety-six aid trucks have come in under very heavy IDF monitoring. They entered without the IDF ensuring that the aid actually gets to the people who need it, as international law requires. When the ceasefire was on, aid was flowing in in very significant numbers; we’re talking 600 trucks a day, not ninety-six. Yes, some was stolen by Hamas. Some was taken by criminal gangs. That’s the reality in the midst of a war when there is otherwise no rule of law. But much aid was getting through. In other words, if you flow significant amounts, then significant amounts will get to the people in need. If you flow ninety-six trucks’ worth, then the criminal gangs will get some and Hamas will get some. That’s not a reason not to flow aid. It’s the precise reason to be flowing a lot of aid, so that it gets to the people who are starving because you have put them under siege for eleven weeks. You mentioned the Americans’ role. Do other countries, including Canada, have any leverage left? They have tools, absolutely. They have trade agreements. They have weapons exports; they have other exports. They can withdraw ambassadors. They can push for a UN Security Council resolution, which would most likely pass if the Americans voted in favour and if they became fed up with Israel’s intransigence. You could have a UN General Assembly resolution if the UN Security Council wasn’t prepared to act. More countries could join in on the International Court of Justice proceedings calling on Israel to ensure that humanitarian aid flows and that genocide is not committed. There was no genocide finding in the ongoing ICJ case raised by South Africa against Israel, but there was a prima facie probability finding. [The court has ruled that South Africa had a right to bring the case forward.] So there are plenty of tools that countries can use and should begin to use if the situation continues. The statement specifically calls out the Netanyahu government. In what way might pressure from foreign countries influence the prime minister’s ability to hold on to power? It will not influence him directly, in the sense that Netanyahu is not going to step down because of outside influence, even American influence. He has a majority coalition, and the last thing he wants is to go into an election now. But the Israeli people, approximately 70 percent, want him out. They want an election, and they are looking to the outside world—both the diaspora Jewish community and other states—to put pressure on the government. If the coalition remains in power, then there won’t be an election until October 2026. There have been hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting this government. Prior to October 7, those protests were in response to the efforts by the government to significantly reform and weaken the judiciary and the judicial processes. And since October 7, there have been protests largely to prioritize the release of the hostages, which the government is not doing. The right-wing ministers in the coalition have made it clear that the hostages are not a priority for them. The stated priority is to defeat Hamas. The real priorities are to avoid elections and to effect as many changes in Israel’s institutions as possible. For the far right, the priorities are to resettle parts of Gaza and annex the West Bank. And so there are many, many Israelis who welcome these protests, and to the extent that this outside pressure can help them, at some point, they could get out on the streets and basically close the country down. They’ve been reluctant to do that because they are in a war and because some of their sons and daughters are fighting in that war. But at some point, they may simply say, “No.” As Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s Democratic Party, and Ehud Olmert, former prime minister, have said, Israel has become a pariah state in the minds of citizens around the world and some governments, and this has to stop. Whether that’s enough to force Netanyahu to resign: unclear, perhaps unlikely, but important. The statement refers to a UN conference in June on the topic of achieving a two-state solution. What role do you think Canada should play in that effort? I think it should speak out very strongly. If you go to the Global Affairs Canada website, you’ll see its policy statements on the Middle East. Ever since I was the Canadian ambassador (2006–2010), and long before that, it’s been clear that Canadian policy and the policy of all Western governments has been to support a two-state solution as the only solution possible for the these two peoples living in the region. Post October 7, the Joe Biden administration and Western countries took the position that in order to avoid further October 7s, we really have to move faster towards two states, not slower. Many Israelis and the Israeli government took the position that October 7 meant that they can never trust the Palestinians again. That’s an understandable and short-term reaction by Israelis who have suffered their worst trauma since 1948. I understand that they still have a hard time sympathizing with Gazans after what happened. But that’s short term. Four years after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Egypt’s then president, Anwar Sadat, was in the Knesset. Two years later, there was a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. You’ve mentioned the two-state solution as being the only way forward. There are many advocates for other arrangements, including a one-state solution. What would you say to that? A one-state solution has two clear outcomes, neither of which is realistic or acceptable. In a not-too-distant future, there will be a majority of Muslims in the area from the river to the sea. So a one-state solution has two options. One is that Israel decides that it is going to try to govern as a minority over a majority of Palestinians who will not have the same democratic rights as Jewish Israelis. That scenario would be tantamount to apartheid, i.e., a minority Jewish Israeli government ruling over a majority Palestinian people who do not have the same rights. The alternative is that all peoples between the river and the sea have equal rights, including equal voting rights. At some point, a majority Palestinian population will be ruling over a minority Jewish population, and that will mark the end of Israel and the end of the Jewish state where Jewish people can feel safe. And despite all my criticism of Israel right now and the criticism of many in the diaspora, and despite the very legitimate criticism of this current Israeli government, as a Jew, I still value and support a Jewish state. Given what we know about the history of Jews, from millennia of pogroms through to the Holocaust, and the wars that followed the country’s independence through to the fact that several countries surrounding Israel—Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Syrians before the al-Assad regime was defeated—were prepared to see it wiped out, it is understandable that Jewish Israelis would be loath to give up their country. Indeed, Israel represents not only the land of the Jews in Israel but it has also represented a kind of insurance policy for Jews in the diaspora, and it’s extremely important for them as well. We’ve seen rising antisemitism in Europe and North America before October 7. We’ve seen it since, though I think that much of what we have seen is not only antisemitism but also anti-war and anti–government of Israel protests. But there is antisemitism. And I continue to be a Zionist, in the sense that I continue to support Israel as a state. I also strongly advocate for a Palestinian state, with full rights, as soon as possible. Both of them should be democratic, they should be liberal, they should be open, and only then will we have a chance for peace and stability in the region. Last week, a gunman killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. And in recent months, the Trump administration has detained student organizers of campus protests in support of Palestinians. It’s also putting immense pressure on universities such as Columbia and Harvard in the name of curbing antisemitism, among other stated reasons. Do you think there’s any going back from these extremes—the hate crimes, the censorship, the assault on human rights? I really do. Despite the fact that the war is, in some ways, at its worst because of the siege and the continued killings as a result of the ground invasion, the protests at the universities have largely disappeared. And that’s not because of Trump. Protests in Canadian universities have disappeared too. My view has always been that when the war is over, the protests will go away. That doesn’t mean antisemitism will go away. It’s always been there. It will always be there. But, as I said, a lot of these protests were anti-Israel and maybe anti-Zionism. Unlike antisemitism, those are legitimate protests. Mixed in there was pure antisemitism—people telling Jews to go back to Poland. Needless to say, that’s a pretty brutal prescription, given what happened to Jews in Poland in the Second World War. But Trump has no interest in combating antisemitism. A guy that invites pure antisemites to Mar-a-Lago, whose social media is full of antisemitism, or retweeting antisemitism—and someone who watches his friends Elon Musk and Steve Bannon Sieg Heil—is not fighting it. What he is doing is taking revenge against the liberal elites who hate all that Trump stands for, and he’s using antisemitism as a cudgel to try to beat them into submission. He’s doing no favour to the Jews, basically shutting down freedom of speech on the basis of protecting against antisemitism. That’s the worst way to try and protect against antisemitism—shutting down universities, eliminating due process, and deporting innocent people. As regards the tragic murder of these two young people, whether it was pure antisemitism or a statement against the government of Israel, it happened in the context of an ongoing war. The shooter, deranged or not, yelled “Free Palestine.” He didn’t yell, “I hate the Jews,” or “Down with the Jews.” So it was in a context. Many people will be critical of me saying that, just as I say that October 7 was a horrible massacre of unbelievable proportions but it also happened in a context. And for people like Bibi Netanyahu to use this brutal murder of two young people to then suggest that somehow a trilateral statement by Canada, the UK, and France contributed to this is the lowest use of scoring political points. The post Is the Joint Statement on Gaza Too Little, Too Late? first appeared on The Walrus.