Juno News - Canada says Palestine isn’t a country

00:00:00.000 So this week the International Criminal Court decided that it has jurisdiction to investigate

00:00:09.400 Israel and the terror group Hamas for alleged war crimes. Now the move was denounced by a number of

00:00:15.400 countries including Israel, Germany, Hungary and also Canada. Now Foreign Minister Mark Garneau

00:00:20.860 issued a statement which basically said that Canada supports the work of the ICC generally

00:00:24.980 and that it's firmly committed to a two-state solution but because Palestine is not a state

00:00:30.400 it can't join any of these international treaties or international bodies and so it actually can't

00:00:35.120 support this move because Palestine is not a state and if it were a state that would be a

00:00:38.740 different story but it's not and so this is the wrong move at this particular time. Now I wanted

00:00:43.680 to make this video because I think it's important to explain what is going on in the Middle East and

00:00:48.280 why Canada made the right decision and what's up with Palestine not being a state. Where did that

00:00:52.720 come from? I thought Palestine was a state that got taken over by Israel or you know something to

00:00:56.360 that effect. Now I'm going to go into a bit of history and it's one of those rare opportunities

00:01:00.740 where we can do that and it's super relevant but I don't want to stray too far so I'm just going to

00:01:04.880 start in about 1916 and this is during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Now what happened at that time

00:01:11.380 is that the British and the French came to an agreement that became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement

00:01:15.780 after the foreign minister so Sykes and Picot. The Sykes-Picot Agreement where they basically divided up

00:01:20.580 the Middle East into areas of influence or areas of control. Now you may have heard something about

00:01:25.660 the British promising to create a Jewish national homeland and some of this division included that

00:01:31.460 promise and this was sort of finalized in the 1920 San Remo conference. Now you can see here from the

00:01:36.880 map that the areas from the Sykes-Picot eventually evolved into what would be known as mandates. Now these

00:01:43.540 mandates were basically areas that the British or the French would control and steward eventually until

00:01:50.400 these places became ready to self-govern. So they would help build the institutions, help the

00:01:54.700 population along. Again remember this was part of the Ottoman Empire so they you know they did not 0.99

00:01:58.600 have these democratic institutions. Perhaps they maybe had no courts or centralized government because

00:02:03.020 the Ottoman Empire collapsed and perhaps regional governments were not set up. And so they basically

00:02:08.220 created all these new entities. Now at some point the part of this map that is Jordan was chopped off

00:02:15.840 and the eventual British mandate for Palestine encompasses what we today know as Israel and the

00:02:21.280 Palestinian territory. So that would be Gaza and the West Bank. And so this map you're looking at right

00:02:27.220 now this is the original partition plan for dividing up the state. So up until this point we do not have

00:02:34.300 an independent Palestine as a state because it was either part of the Ottoman Empire or a mandate

00:02:40.860 controlled by the British so that they would prepare it to become a state. Now 1947 this is the opportunity

00:02:46.040 to become a state. This is where the UN proposes a division of the land a partition plan because

00:02:51.340 there's a lot of conflict and strife between the Jews and the Arabs who live there. Now you can see

00:02:56.560 the blue is the Jewish section the Jewish state again unnamed at this particular point and the yellowy

00:03:01.680 orange is going to be the Arab state again unnamed at this particular point in 1947. Now what happens

00:03:07.360 is that the Jewish delegation the Jewish representatives accept this partition plan

00:03:12.920 but the Arab representatives do not. And so you have then the Israeli war of independence so the 1948 war

00:03:20.000 and that war results in a lot of refugees being created. Now little known fact a lot of people are

00:03:25.400 familiar with Palestinian refugees but very few are familiar with Jewish refugees from Arab lands and

00:03:32.200 from Arabized lands in the Middle East. So basically what happens is the state of Israel is declared

00:03:37.480 and there starts a war to now see what the borders are going to be following the failure of the

00:03:42.980 partition plan. Arab and Muslim governments in the Middle East basically eject or force out a number of

00:03:49.580 their Jewish subject pretty much you know if you look at today at Jewish populations in the Middle East

00:03:53.300 they went sometimes from hundreds of thousands to you know zero or one. And so these people are all

00:03:59.020 going to move to this new Jewish state which which became Israel and some of the Palestinians who lived

00:04:06.700 in the Jewish areas or what came to be Jewish controlled areas eventually moved out. Now there

00:04:12.120 were two wars there was one in 1948 and then one in 1967. So the 48 war created a number of refugees

00:04:17.940 from the Middle East generally so that would be Jews being evicted from countries in the Middle East

00:04:23.480 and it would be Jews being evicted from their homes in the West Bank and it would be Palestinians 0.75

00:04:27.580 evicted from their homes in what would eventually become uh the sort of 1967 Israel or some people

00:04:33.340 refer to it Israel proper or you know the Green Line Israel. So this created a number of refugees 0.52

00:04:38.660 and this led to the refugee problem. Fast forward to 1967 and whatever is left of the West Bank which

00:04:45.080 was then controlled by Jordan and that is why it was called the West Bank because it's the West Bank

00:04:49.460 the Jordan River from the country of Jordan it's west of Jordan. And so fast forward there Israel gains 0.95

00:04:54.280 control of that and the Gaza Strip creating more refugees so now you have sort of a double refugee

00:04:58.420 problem you have refugees from the original refugees from 67 so you have an additional refugee problem

00:05:03.620 and that is what the Israel-Palestine conflict and the refugee issue is often what you hear about

00:05:10.440 that is what the government of Canada is referring to a resolution of the two states. Now again it's a

00:05:15.920 little bit confusing because there was no official state of Palestine all you have is sort of

00:05:19.640 armistice lines or peace lines uh and it's also a little bit confusing because there are Jewish 0.98

00:05:24.580 refugees not only from the Middle East as a whole which is why I believe that you can't say the

00:05:29.760 Israeli-Palestinian conflict you have to talk about the Israeli-Arab conflict because it's a much

00:05:33.620 larger conflict but there are also Jewish refugees from the West Bank so places in Jerusalem where Jews

00:05:38.940 were actually evicted from the old city uh places surrounding Jerusalem where they were you know ejected

00:05:43.900 because again the refugees were moving east and west both Arabs and Jews and so it's a very very 0.99

00:05:49.400 messy story but in in a nutshell I think that encompasses up till uh you know at the very least

00:05:54.180 until this the 70s uh where things things calmed down the very least until the 70s uh before the

00:06:00.220 the 73 war the Yom Kippur war or the October war as some people call it um that pretty much uh involved

00:06:06.560 going back to this 1967 line after all the peace treaties with with uh with Egypt and you know

00:06:11.860 everything was given back so long story short that is a bit of the brief history but I think Canada did

00:06:17.140 the right thing I think we made the right decision because at this particular point in time Palestine 1.00

00:06:21.440 is not a state as such now you know will it become one what what does that look like again maybe that's

00:06:26.660 a topic for another video and there's you know this entire thing is jam-packed a lot of history I'm

00:06:31.160 really trying to cram it in and this video is already going a little longer than I wanted but

00:06:34.140 hopefully that covers just a bit of the issue for you and why I think Canada made the right move and

00:06:40.640 why Palestine is not a state until this particular time so for True North I am Sam Ashkenazi thank you so much for

00:06:47.140 and have yourselves a great day

Juno News - February 14, 2021

Canada says Palestine isn’t a country

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