Mr. Speaker, tonight's debate is about the Middle East. For many of the people in my riding, this is not a debate about Canadian foreign policy; this is about family. Like the member for Mount Royal, many of the citizens of St. Paul's every day watch the news, listen for a phone call with the thoughts of their family members who live there, study there, work there.
As a little girl growing up in Toronto, I knew only one Hebrew word, shalom. It means peace. We sang about peace in the song Shalom Haverim . We knew it was about peace and about friends hopefully coming back. I do not think that at any time we could have even remotely contemplated what the absence of peace could feel like, what the worry about friends that might not come home would mean.
When I first started knocking on the doors of St. Paul's in 1997 I remember being surprised at how often I was asked if I had ever been to Israel. I did not really understand why that would be so important to so many. I do know now. It is about the families, their histories and today, on Holocaust remembrance day, it is about making sure that the atrocities chronicled in Yad Vashem must never happen again.
I believe it is about eliminating hatred and moving from the tolerance that we usually enjoy here in Canada to try to reach real respect and dignity worldwide.
As September 11 taught us so clearly, this is a very small planet and the costs of hatred and its byproduct terrorism are intolerable.
As Thomas Friedman quoted in his March 10 article in the New York Times , the Middle East analyst Stephen Cohen said:
The question is whether Palestinian extremists will do what bin Laden could not: civilizational war. If you are willing to give up your own life and that of thousands of your own people, the overwhelming of America and Israel does not deter you any more. We are now on the cusp of the extremists' realizing this destructive power, before the majority is mobilized for an alternative. That's why this Israeli-Palestinian war is not just a local ethnic conflict that we can ignore. It resonates with too many millions of people, connected by too many TV's, with too many dangerous weapons.
As the member for St. Paul's, I have travelled to Israel and the Palestinian territories three times; in 1999 with my eldest son, Jack; in 2000 with the Prime Minister and my friend and brilliant colleague, the member for Mount Royal and with many other parliamentarians with strong relationships to the Middle East; and last year I went with my youngest son, Ben.
It was indeed travelling with my sons that was the most poignant. As I looked at the soldiers, some younger than my own boys, I could only think what their mothers must feel and how they must hope and want to work toward peace.
As we sat in the town hall in Metullah last year I felt an insecurity that was palpable, that as the clock showed 8 p.m. the counsellors kept glancing at their watches. It was at that time that they had come to expect the Katushka rockets over the border from Lebanon. As we sat in a cafe in Ben Yehuda, everyone of us was aware of the previous bombings there. Would tonight be safe? We were no longer able to take our Canadian homeland security for granted.
We went to meet with Saeb Ereket in Jericho by bulletproof van. We heard his personal narrative. With his Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies he was worried for his son, worried that his father's preoccupation with the peace process would make his son a target, worried that his son might decide to act out by going and throwing stones and getting into harm's way.
This is no way to live. Too many have lost their lives.
Out of these darkest times we must look forward to a way out. I believe that the way out is a way that we already have through an agreement. The political process must resume as a matter of extreme emergency. We must look forward to the commitments that have been made to the longstanding Canadian policy in the Middle East, Israel and Palestine living side by side within secure and recognized borders.
We must work to implement the Tenet security work plan as a first step toward the implementation of the Mitchell committee recommendations with the aim of resuming negotiations on this political settlement.
Last Sunday night in St. Paul's I met with some of my constituents who are very concerned. I think at some level they are feeling abandoned by their Canadian government. We talked and it was a very constructive conversation. They feel that as Canadians we should not be taking a them and us, teeter-totter path. They feel that we should continue to make decisions based on our Canadian values.
Professor Dewitt of York University thought we must begin with an absolute campaign against incitement, that we must find ways to audit it and that we must act to eliminate it. We must continue to earn the gavel that the UN working group gave us on Palestinian refugees. It is extraordinarily important that Canada keep that gavel and keep the moral authority to be able to be fair in the region. It is extraordinarily important that we continue to build democracy and that we use all the skills of public servants and all people we could mobilize to help in the region.
On the incitement file I have to say following my trips to the Middle East I feel there is a disparity between what we witnessed in Israel and what we saw in the fantastic museum demonstration which showed the effects of hatred in Northern Ireland and in Bosnia. They brought school groups to see the quotations of peacemakers and peacebuilders from around the world.
I am concerned that we do not have evidence of that happening on the Palestinian side. I am concerned that there are still maps without Israel, that hatred is being portrayed against Israelis. The kinds of pamphlets that were turned in by our Canadian delegates from the Durban conference would bear that out.
I do not believe that suicide bombers just happen. They are created and encouraged. As Thomas Friedman said in his April 7 article, a normal state cannot be built on the backs of suicide bombers. We as Canadians should insist that everyone must declare the right of both states to exist.
We must take our audit and gather evidence of incitement. We must work hard in our truly Canadian tradition based on Lester Pearson and George Ignatieff to strengthen the rule of law that can only happen in an institution such as the United Nations. It is not perfect. We have a responsibility to make it even better.
We must support the efforts of people such as Arnold Noyak who are working in Jordan and in the Palestinian territories with Jewish doctors, showing that they can actually work on the ground.
This is a difficult time for Canadians. We have many friends affected by this horrible situation in the Middle East. We understand it is not clear. This weekend we had the Jews for Peace vigil, the Israel solidarity rally and many e-mails saying that we should stop pandering to the Jews.
It is imperative as parliamentarians that we stay the course in sticking to our Canadian values and make our decisions in that way. On a personal note, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has done an admirable job in keeping that fine line and the corrections that are necessary to keep this complex situation on the rails to peace. We must work toward the peace process. We must make sure there is a political solution that will end terrorism.
It is extraordinarily important as we move forward that we look back at one of the most brilliant people we have known, Albert Einstein, as a constituent from the Ontario Cancer Institute reminded me, who said that peace could not be achieved through violence, that it could only be attained through understanding.