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OTTAWA — Canada is “evaluating the relationship with Israel”, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday after Prime Minister Mark Carney called the country’s strike on Qatar “an unprovoked attack.”
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Israel says it targeted senior Hamas leaders in the capital Doha on Tuesday, while the militant group says its main ceasefire negotiator survived the attack.
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On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to seek sanctions against Israel and a partial trade suspension.
Anand said while Hamas must release its Israeli hostages in Gaza, Israel’s strike on Qatar was an “unacceptable” breach of the sovereignty of a country trying to facilitate peace talks.
“We are very surprised and disheartened at the Israeli attack in Qatar yesterday,” she told reporters in Edmonton outside of the Liberal national caucus meeting.
“As a result of the declining stability in the Middle East, we will continue to evaluate our next steps.”
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The Israeli embassy in Ottawa did not offer an immediate response to Anand’s comment.
In a podcast interview earlier Wednesday, Carney said that Tuesday’s attack was “intolerable … in the sense (that) it violates international law.”
Carney did not say whether Canada would take further steps in response to Israel’s attack, adding that “we look to move forward from this point.”
The Carney government has taken an increasingly sharp tone in statements on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its actions across the Middle East.
The Israeli government says it’s pushing back on existential threats linked to Iran across the region, but Canada and many of its peers say Israel is going beyond its legitimate security interests while spreading instability across the region and starvation in Gaza.
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Canada is set to formally recognize Palestinian statehood later this month, a move which has prompted heavy pushback from Israel and Canadian Jewish organizations. Anand insisted Wednesday that Ottawa is working with the Palestinian Authority to ensure reforms that will lead to peace in the region.
On the platform X, Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed quoted a New York Times opinion piece which said Carney is among those “contributing to a climate of anti-Jewish demonization by treating Israel as a quasi-pariah state whose presumptive supporters can be viewed as guilty accomplices.”
Those leaders are harming their own Jewish citizens through “their virtue-signalling foreign policy,” the quote reads.
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Carney condemns ’intolerable’ Israeli strike on Qatar that killed Hamas officials
Israeli strike in Qatar targets Hamas leaders as they weigh ceasefire proposal
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