Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly attends a luncheon with the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal in Montreal on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025. Canadian politicians are pushing back on suggestions that Ottawa accept Palestinians if they are forcibly removed from the Gaza Strip. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi

OTTAWA - Canadian politicians are pushing back on the idea of clearing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip as an Israeli minister suggests some of them could be sent to Canada.

"We support Palestinians’ right to self-determination, including from being forcibly displaced from Gaza," Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly wrote on the online platform X on Wednesday.

The previous day, U.S. President Donald Trump stunned leaders across the Middle East and beyond when he suggested that the territory be cleared out and made into a U.S.-owned resort destination.

Human Rights Watch and similar groups say Trump's plan would amount to ethnic cleansing.

While White House aides and various analysts have suggested other ideas for American involvement, Trump doubled down on his proposal Thursday, saying "the Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting," by which point Palestinians "would have already been resettled."

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz wrote Thursday on X that he'd instructed Israeli's military to draft a plan to evacuate "any resident of Gaza who wishes to leave" to be resettled to willing countries abroad.

"Countries like Canada, which has a structured immigration program, have previously expressed willingness to take in residents from Gaza," he wrote.

Ottawa's only resettlement program for Gazans is limited to people with relatives in Canada, and only a small portion of the applications — currently capped at 5,000 — have resulted in Palestinians actually making it to Canada.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not immediately respond when asked for the latest figures on Palestinian resettlement. In its last public disclosure release, issued in late May 2024, it said just 41 people had arrived as of May 20. CBC News reported last month that just 616 people had arrived under the temporary program.

Before Katz made his comments, Joly said Canada is still calling for a two-state solution — the creation of a Palestinian state that would exist in peace alongside Israel.

"Canada's long-standing position on Gaza has not changed," she wrote Wednesday on the platform X.

International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, Justice Minister Arif Virani and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh were among a dozen MPs who also pushed back on Trump's idea.

Hussen, Virani and seven other Liberal MPs released a statement calling Trump's idea "preposterous and a complete violation of international law" and saying that "it amounts to ethnic cleansing."

Singh said that Trump's comments "destabilize" the Middle East and threaten the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. "Trump's threats are utter madness. They violate every international law," he wrote in a post on X.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs deferred comment to the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, which did not provide an immediate response.

The Gaza Strip was established as a Palestinian territory after Palestinians were displaced across the region during the creation of the State of Israel.

Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt already host thousands of Palestinian refugees and say it would be inappropriate to remove more Palestinians from their homeland.

Israel rejects the United Nations' designation of Palestinians as refugees, saying this creates an illegitimate idea of them returning to land that is now Israel. Israeli officials also have argued that the Jewish people have ancestral ties to the land.

Mona Abuamara, the Palestinian ambassador in Ottawa, said that Israeli "terrorist settlers" in occupied Palestinian territories are the ones who should be moved to other countries. She said another alternative is to have Palestinians take back land that is now Israel.

"If you don't want to move forward, we can happily go back," she wrote on X.

In late 2023, amid reports that the Israeli government was looking to send Palestinians to countries like Canada, Immigration Minister Marc Miller dismissed talk of a "so-called 'voluntary transfer' of Gazans out of Gaza" to Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2025.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2025