As the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip lingers on, Canada remains committed to its view on the Middle East conflict. New comments from Peter Kent, Junior Foreign Minister and designated spokesman on the conflict clarify and strengthen Canada’s position on the hotly debated issue.

“Again, Hamas bears the burden of responsibility. This history of Hamas is to use civilian infrastructure and civilian populations as shields for their terrorist activities,” said Kent, rejecting any suggestion that Israel’s response to Hamas rocket attacks has been disproportionate.

Kent presents a valid point that’s often “forgotten” in the negative blitz of media attacks on Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip. Hamas purposely operates in densely populated areas within the strip as a means of deterring Israeli retaliatory strikes. Just days ago, eyewitnesses in Gaza told the Associated Press Hamas militants were using the UN school hit by Israeli forces to fire mortars at Israeli soldiers. Video from late 2007 also confirms Hamas’ use of schools as an area from which to fire rockets at Israel. That video can be seen here. And to strengthen his case even more, a recently released video shows Hamas using UN sponsored ambulances to hide from Israeli forces operating in the strip.

It’s also Kent’s belief that these tactics used by Hamas have directly caused the majority of civilian casualties in the conflict. “The unwillingness of Hamas to stop its terrorist activity is prolonging and deepening what is a humanitarian tragedy, there’s no question,” he told reporters.

In regards to the international effort to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Kent stated that “the burden of responsibility lies now with Hamas and an end to the terrorist rocketing. Israel has said – and Canada would support – an immediate ceasefire. But only if it’s a permanent ceasefire, if it’s a sustainable ceasefire and if it’s a durable ceasefire and if Hamas doesn’t – as it has in the past – use it to rearm and continue rocketing.”

Kent, like me, doesn’t want to see a meaningless ceasefire take place like we saw this past summer which Hamas used as a 6-month opportunity to prepare for an inevitable Israeli ground assault. As such, it seems more and more likely that when Israeli finally does end Operation Cast Lead, an international force of some sort will need to be stationed along the Philadelphia Corridor to prevent Hamas from rearming via smuggling tunnels to Egypt. The only problem to this solution is the embarrassing failure of UNIFIL to stop Hezbullah from rearming after the 2006 Lebanon War.

What other solutions are there that could be intertwined with a ceasefire agreement that would please both sides? It seems like there’s no clear-cut answer to my question, but I want to hear your thoughts.

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Tags: ceasefire, gaza, hamas, human shield, israel, peter kent

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 3:51 am and is filed under Federal Government, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.