Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

Before getting into what I'd like to tell you over the next few minutes, I want to emphasize that all the sources I use are Israeli. Not that Palestinian sources are unreliable, but my sources show that there are people inside Israel who agree with my point of view. While most of the sources are critical of the policies of the State of Israel, others are not.

I would like to start by stating a fundamental principle that should guide Canadian policies and that will guide my own comments in this committee. In dealing with international issues, it is in Canada’s best interest to stick to international law, for reasons having to do with both the national and the international context.

At the national level, sticking to international law provides a criterion that is objective and that can contribute to addressing tensions between various social groups who make competing claims. Referring to international law can be a good criterion for addressing these claims in a fair way. Such a stand would play an important role in toning down tensions and social conflicts. At the international level, promoting international law and upholding it has traditionally been the trademark of Canadian policy and a major factor in the high standing Canada enjoys on the international scene.

In recent years, however, Canada’s clout has been obscured by positions that reflected partisan politics rather than international legality. I will demonstrate that. Canada’s loss of its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2020 is just an indicator of this state of affairs. In this case, the concept of aggressor and victim has been reversed in the public sphere. Everyone talks as if Hamas is the aggressor, but we forget that, for 100 years, policies were systematically put in place to take control of Palestine's land and expel Palestinians. I refer you to a book by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which was published in English and in French. I documented all of this in a book I recently finished, which I will table here.

In the document titled “Canadian policy on key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, the Government of Canada brilliantly asserts all these legal principles of international law. However, Canada has been giving lip service to these principles of international law, while actively working to undermine them. In the past, I have met with foreign ministers to express my opinions. What I did was print out Canada's official policy and ask them to implement it. Canada recognizes that settlements are illegal, but there is no serious pressure to put an end to them. None.

I'm going to quickly get to the issue of the two-state solution.

In the Oslo accords, the issue is the map published by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. This is the standard map that everyone publishes. It shows the territories of the West Bank and Gaza, which make up only 22% of historical Palestine. These territories were conquered in 1967, and the remaining 78% was conquered in 1949. Part was conquered under the international legality of Resolution 181 and part as a result of the war.

In practice, the entire world, including the vast majority of Palestinians, now recognizes the territory delineated in 1949 as Israel's de facto border. What happened in the Oslo accords is that the principle—