Walkom: Canada and Obama's not-so-new Israel policy - Toronto Star

Barack Obama's new position on the Middle East isn't very new. Like previous grand pronouncements from the U.S. president, it may not end up meaning much.

But one of its side effects is to emphasize the distinction between Canada's official policy towards the Palestinian question and the rhetoric of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

What Obama said Thursday was not earth-shaking. Towards the end of a lengthy speech articulating America's cautiously supportive approach to democratic uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, he veered into Israeli-Palestinian relations.

He said that any territorial division between the two sides should — with the possible exception of Jerusalem — adhere to borders as they were before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

Any deviations from these borders, Obama said, must be agreed to by both sides.

The speech outraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his U.S. supporters, who insist that Israel must keep much, if not all, of the West Bank.

But it is hardly a radical idea. It follows the position taken by the United Nations Security Council as well as that of most interlocutors trying to sort out the Palestinian quandary.

Until 2004, when George W. Bush suggested that the 1967 borders were no longer realistic, it was also U.S. policy.

And in spite of Harper's well-documented support of Israel, it is Ottawa's official position. You can find it on the foreign affairs department website.

There Canada sets out its long-held view that any peace agreement must be based on Security Council resolution 242, which, among other things, calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

Canada, the foreign affairs department says, "does not recognize permanent Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967" — including East Jerusalem.

Canada also opposes all Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, noting that their very existence violates the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war.

As well, Canada formally opposes those parts of the Israeli security barrier erected inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

And it demands a "just solution," arrived at through negotiation, to the plight of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel.

In short, we were there — technically at least — before Obama.

What Thursday's speech does, however, is make it more difficult for Harper to recast this official position to jibe with his Israel-right-or-wrong rhetoric.

That's because the only pillar of Conservative foreign policy more unshakable than adherence to Israel is adherence to the U.S.

So what happens now?

First, note that Obama's insistence on linking Palestine to the ongoing Arab revolts is perfectly logical.

It would be bizarre for America to trumpet democracy in Libya while explicitly supporting the illegal annexation by Israel of someone else's land.

What's more, the Palestinian people themselves have made the linkage — forcing the West Bank's U.S.-backed government to forge a unity front with Gaza's Hamas regime.

But note also that Obama has failed here before. Netanyahu's refusal to heed his earlier call to halt illegal settlement construction (and Israel's rock-hard support in the U.S. Congress) forced the U.S. president to back down once before. He may do so again.

Until then, Thursday's speech puts Canada's Conservatives in a bind. Much of Harper's domestic and foreign agenda is built around unconditional support for whatever position the Israeli government of the day happens to take.

So far, the prime minister appears to be sticking to that line. Will he continue in this vein? Or will he make a bow to the newish Obama policy — a policy that, officially, also happens to be our own?

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.