(Ottawa) Canada believes it is not appropriate to equate Hamas with the elected government of Israel, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland commented on Tuesday in response to the request for arrest warrants for the International Criminal Court (ICC) – without however wanting to say whether Ottawa would execute them if they were issued.
“For Canada, it is not correct to make an equivalence between the leaders of a terrorist organization and the leaders of a democracy,” she argued in response to a journalist’s response on Tuesday. .
The Deputy Prime Minister did not want to go further, except to plead that Ottawa respected the ICC, which is “an independent” and “objective” multilateral institution.
She therefore did not want to say whether Canada could execute the arrest warrants if they were issued, maintaining that this was a “hypothetical” question.
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Chrystia Freeland
G7 allies such as France, Germany and Italy also denounced a “false equivalence” in reaction to the announcement by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
Canada’s reaction was a long time coming.
It first came from Mme Freeland, thanks to Tuesday’s agenda, but Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly could also speak on this subject.
Prosecutor Khan on Monday called for the issuance of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
He attributes to them “deliberate starvation of civilians”, “intentional homicide”, and “extermination and/or murder” in connection with the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip.
At the same time, he requested warrants against three senior Hamas officials, namely Ismaïl Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, and Yahya Sinouar.
He accuses them of “extermination”, “rape and other forms of sexual violence” and “hostage-taking as a war crime” linked to the attack on the Islamist movement in Israel on October 7. .
The NDP recalls its motion
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all of his ministers supported, on March 18, a New Democratic motion which notably affected current international legal proceedings.
The motion in question provides that the government must “support the work of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court”.
The leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Jagmeet Singh, did not fail to remind the Liberals of their support for this approach.
“The NDP welcomes the ICC chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against five senior Israeli and Hamas leaders,” he reacted Monday on the X network.
“On March 18, the Prime Minister promised, by voting for the NDP motion, that he would support the work of the ICC. Today, he must respect the promise he made to Canadians,” he also wrote.
The motion is not binding, but it was still co-written by the New Democrats and the Liberals, whose caucus is divided on the issue.
With Agence France-Presse