By World Economic Forum – Flickr: Mark Carney – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia
One reads with amazement and disbelief the latest statement issued by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney after his July 30, 2025 discussion with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
Can this really be a leader of a serious country who is genuinely aware of the realities of the Middle East, or is it perhaps someone who is cleverly paying lip-service to a redundant, powerless and autocratic Palestinian leader?
Or perhaps could this be a message intended by Mark Carney and his colleagues to assuage, mollify and pamper the aggressive and uncontrollable pro-Palestinian and violent anti-Israel lobby both in Ottawa as well as in the streets of Toronto, Montreal and other cities in Canada that is slowly but surely undermining the integrity and internal security of Canadian society?
The message relayed by Carney to Mahmoud Abbas is devoid of any vestige of reality, and replete with empty and meaningless wishful thinking.
This for the following reasons:
• Prime Minister Carney reaffirmed “Canada’s commitment to a two-state solution – an independent, viable, and sovereign Palestinian state living side by side with the State of Israel in peace and security.”
This “two-state vision” may indeed have been an honourable vision of hope enunciated many years ago in 2002 by former U.S. President George W. Bush and reiterated ad infinitum since then and up to the present day, as a meaningless form of lingua franca by international leaders and UN resolutions.
However, this two-state vision has never been accepted by the Palestinians and Israelis themselves. To the contrary, the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel’s very right to exist independently, and the issue of Palestinian statehood remains, pursuant to the agreed-upon, and still valid 1993-5 Oslo Accords, an open negotiating issue between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.
Therefore, in paying lip-service to the “two-state vision” Prime Minister Carney is rehashing nothing more than unrealistic, wishful thinking without really understanding what practicalities lie behind that expression.
• Prime Minister Carney’s declared intention to “recognize the State of Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025” is a further indication of utter naivete and sheer ignorance.
He is surely well-advised by his advisers and by Canada’s world-renowned international lawyers, that there simply exists no such entity as a ‘State of Palestine’.
By the same token, he is presumably advised that UN General Assembly resolutions recognizing anything, have absolutely no legally binding status and are nothing more than the political viewpoints of those states supporting them.
As such, in voicing his intention to recognize a non-existent state of Palestine, Prime Minister Carney is merely pulling the wool over the eyes of those wishing to believe what he is saying.
• In predicating his intention to recognize a “State of Palestine” on “the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to much-needed reforms, including … commitments to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state,” the Prime Minister is surely fully aware of the fact that Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas made the same commitments in the Oslo Accords, commitments that to this day have not been realized and have been violated, together with most of the Palestinian commitments in those accords.
In welcoming Mahmoud Abbas’s “renewed commitment to these reforms” Prime Minister Carney is knowingly deceiving both himself and the Canadian people by paying valueless lip-service to empty commitments that no leader of the Palestinian Authority is able and genuinely willing to implement.
• In informing the President of the Palestinian Authority that Canada will “increase its efforts to promote peace and stability in the region, and work closely with regional allies toward this goal” Prime Minister Carney is voicing a totally empty, meaningless and misleading commitment.
Joining such regional allies as France, Russia, the UK, Norway, Ireland, Spain and others in ganging up against Israel in the United Nations and unilaterally recognizing a non-existent Palestinian state, undermines the Oslo Accords. It undermines the Palestinian commitment to negotiated resolution of the conflict. It also undermines the obligation of those very states that signed the Oslo Accords as witnesses, to maintain the integrity of the accords.
As such, Prime Minister Carney’s promise to Mahmoud Abbas is the very antithesis of promoting peace. It encourages the Hamas terrorist leadership and their Palestinian Authority partners in their stubborn refusal to free the Israeli hostages, and in their determination to continue their terror campaign against Israel. It encourages the other states in the UN as well as the international public, in their continued hostility to Israel and overall antisemitism.
With this ill-advised and irresponsible statement, as well as the policies that it describes, Prime Minister Carney has blatantly and shamefully abandoned Canada’s traditional support for Israel — a support that has consistently been based on a solid commonality of political, security, economic and cultural interests between Canada and Israel.
Indeed, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared in 2014 in Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, that Canada will always have Israel’s back: “Through fire and water, Canada will stand with you.”
Regrettably, and to the contrary, under Prime Minister Carney, and his feckless predecessor Justin Trudeau, Canada has stabbed, and is continuing to stab Israel in its back.
One may ask if this ill-advised policy really serves the genuine interests of Canada, its society and people.
And this begs the question whether the damage that has been caused will ever be repaired.
Ambassador Alan Baker, the former Legal Adviser of Israel’s foreign ministry, served as Israel’s ambassador to Canada between 2004 and 2008. He presently heads the Global Law Forum at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
Let’s not beat around the bush, carney is a shallow ignorant individual. Celebrated by shallow ignorant Liberal voting Canadians impressed by his credentials as some kind of genius he’s really pathetic mentally, and physically as well, with his stooped shoulders. An imposing figure, intellectually and physically this guy is not
It is socialist theology “uber Alles”. Like Macron and Stamer.
I love the ideas below. Israel (Jews and other right thinking people like Douglas Murray and Brendan O’Niell need to star supporting Western province and Quebec separation.
You can have a great deal of fun if, instead of referring to history and the treaties, you use your opponents’ criteria against them. Quite often, I have to listen to the statement that the Israelis are settlers and should return the land to its rightful owners. When I hear that, I don’t argue by referring to the Bible or the various treaties. My reply is simply: have you got your bags packed? And when they look at me, I answer: you are living on Indian land and so are a settler. And since settlers must return the land to its rightful owners, you should get ready to return to your ancestral lands. To see the look on their faces and to listen to the stuttering replies is worth the whole exercise. They are intellectual frauds and I modestly help them to prove it.
It is socialist theology “uber Alles”. Like Macron and Stamer.
Plenty of Arab/Muslims in Quebec from N Africa.
pdale5… And perhaps if it transpires that Alberta and/or Saskatchewan are mulling over the possibility of leaving Canada, Israel could voice its support for these provinces, in addition to Quebec.
Yes, indeed. My actual letter to Carney and Bibi contained the words, after independent Quebec, ‘Alberta, as well’. I forgot Saskatchewan, but the same principle applies there.
You could also apply the same logic to other countries who choose to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. I think of France and Brittany, Spain and Catalonia. And similar.
Carney is a Canadian Liberal. The only principle he and the other Liberals have is to remain in power at all cost. This declaration is a method for gathering votes in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
What Carney didn’t realise is that his criteria for recognition of a ‘Palestinian State’ fit exactly the criteria for an independent Quebec. I have written to him about this and I have also sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Israel. I have suggested that, since Canada now interferes in the affairs of other states, Israel should now consider declaring its support for an independent Quebec– using Carney’s criteria. Fair is fair after all. And we Canadians are fair, even if we are nothing else.
We need to come back to a common baseline. There already is a Palestinian state living, more or less, in peace next door to Israel. Maybe all the rhetoric about a two state solution is just that. Sure, the Oslo accords define a division of Israel into two countries, hopefully living in peace side by side, but those accords were scrapped by our erstwhile partners to the deal and those who still attempt to get more out of it than was originally intended are nothing other than barking dogs.