Michael, thank you for the question. I want to stress that any comments I made today at the United Nations were made in a statement that is a statement of the Government of Canada, so your questions would be equally well placed to your counterpart in Parliament as to me.
My point was that many of the references in the preamble to previous decisions of the International Court of Justice or to other issues are not necessarily helpful in getting us to the table and getting us to a resolution of it. I think the view of the government in the end was, this year as it was last year, that it was important for Canada to join with....
I think this year there were 162 other member states of the United Nations indicating that we supported the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, which is a right that is contained in the charter. Self-determination of peoples has been an important right expressed in the charter. Also, we all need to work hard to establish the security of and the status of having a Palestinian state side by side, living in peace and security with Israel. It's the view of most people, I would say, that it's very difficult to imagine how we're going to get to a greater degree of stability and security in the Middle East unless we have a resolution or steps toward a resolution of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Government of Israel.
I have to say that I noticed your tweet yesterday, which I thought was very positive. I think that the efforts that have been made by the Palestinians to re-engage with the Israelis will make a big difference in terms of providing greater stability to people living in the Palestinian Authority, and I think that's the right direction for us to go.