The Current - Canada threatens Israel with sanctions over Gaza aid crisis

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Canada, France and the U.K. are threatening sanctions against Israel over its 11-week blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and plans to escalate military action in the enclave. Matt Galloway talks to Jon Allen, former Canadian ambassador to Israel; and UNICEF spokesperson James Elder about the mounting international pressure on Israel — and what it might mean for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. More than 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past 19 months, according to local health officials. Whole cities have been reduced to rubble, thousands have fled, while those who remain have been without safe shelter, reliable food, water and health care. For the past 11 weeks, Israel had blocked all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, leading to warnings from the United Nations of a risk of famine, only allowing a basic amount of food to enter starting on Sunday. On Friday, Israel announced plans to escalate its military operations, including redeploying

ground troops to indefinitely take over control of several areas. Now, some of Israel's allies, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, are speaking out, saying if Israel does not de-escalate, they will consider punitive measures, including sanctions. John Allen is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former Canadian ambassador to Israel. John Allen, good morning. Good morning, Matt. This statement released by Canada, France and the UK is strongly worded. It says that those countries have always supported Israel's right to defend Israelis against terrorism,

but describes the current escalation as wholly disproportionate, says that the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable, and says that the actions of the Netanyahu government are egregious. What do you make of the language used in this statement? Well, it's an extremely important statement. It's comprehensive. It is

definitely strong. It's the strongest statement that I have ever seen these three governments make. But it's required at this time, given, as you just described, 11 weeks of a humanitarian siege, of a humanitarian siege, the displacement, attempted displacement of 1.1 million Palestinians from the north to the south into only 20% of the Gaza Strip, and probably most importantly overall the disproportionate use of force. Israel has a right to defend itself. The massacre of October 7 was horrific, but in response to that, and of course the hostages must be released and the statement calls for that, but the response to that, what these three countries are saying and others are saying now has been disproportionate

and is breaching an international humanitarian law. Why do you think the Prime Minister Mark Carney signed on to this statement now? I can't say exactly. He was in the Vatican. He spoke with the Pope, who's been clear on this, as was his predecessor. He had an opportunity to meet with a very significant number of European leaders who I'm sure are all concerned about this. We are approaching levels of starvation, as described by multiple UN organizations on the ground. And I think they just realized that enough was enough

and that Prime Minister Netanyahu seemed to have no bounds and no restrictions on his action. So they decided finally, and I think think necessarily to move on this. It comes at a time, the statement comes at a time of increasing pressure and criticism toward Netanyahu from inside Israel and beyond. The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned of possible war crimes. A former general with the Israeli Defence Force, Yair Golan talked about Israel's actions being in his words unconscionable and said that Israel risks becoming a pariah state. What do you make of the international

context that this statement and in the internal context that this statement arrives in? Well, we now have a situation in Israel where between 68 and 70 percent of Israelis want the prime minister to resign and hold elections, which is one of the prime reasons that he broke the ceasefire and restarted the war. He does not want to face elections. Yair Golan, not only a former senior military officer, but head of the third largest party in Israel right now, one of the few people who got down to the kibbutzim to help save people before the IDF did. Do you believe he's right that Israel risks becoming a pariah state? I think in the minds of many of its former supporters and many progressive Jews and many people who have always seen Israel, at least for many years, as the David, not the Goliath,

I think many people do see Israel as this government as a pariah state. The current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says this statement is a win in his words for Hamas and those words have been echoed by the Canadian Conservative leader, Pierre Poliev as well. What do you make of that? I think it's completely false. Hamas and the extremists in Israel are not interested in two states. This statement made clear that two states is the only way forward for these two peoples who are trying to share this land. Hamas wants one state.

Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, the prime minister's two right-wing messianic leaders, want one state. They want to resettle Gaza. They want to annex the West Bank. So those are the extremists. This statement is not meant to support Hamas. It's obvious that Hamas would love a ceasefire. They're a terrorist group. They want to survive. But this statement is meant to try and give succor to the

suffering of the Palestinian people right now, innocent women, children, elderly, et cetera. It comes independent of the United States. The U.S. was not part of this joint statement, but the U.S. has recently negotiated the release of an American hostage directly with Hamas, cut Israel out of that. The president was in the Middle East, did not meet with Israeli officials in that trip.

The US is also in talks with Iran around the nuclear program there. What is your understanding of where the US Israel relationship is right now? And do you think that the US would be would be moved by that international context that you've been talking about to if not issue a similar statement then sign on to what Canada France and the UK have released? Well Trump has already talked about starvation in the Gaza Strip. He of

course promised to solve this problem on day one of his administration. We are now in day 120 or so. His Middle East negotiator Steve Wittkopf had negotiated the ceasefire which Netanyahu broke. My sense is

Marco Rubio made three calls to Netanyahu trying to get the humanitarian aid to the United States. He was not going to be able to do that which Netanyahu broke. My sense is Marco Rubio made three calls to Netanyahu trying to get the humanitarian aid to come in. My sense is that the Trump administration is reaching also a breaking point and may have had enough. Whether they will force more humanitarian aid,

whether they will force the ceasefire to begin again is not clear. Clearly if they wanted to get behind this criticism, there could be a UN Security Council resolution which is the highest form of sanction that the international community has. In the meantime, just before I let you go, the UK has suspended talks over expanding its free trade agreement with Israel. The European Union is reviewing its trade agreement with Israel. We haven't heard what steps Canada is going to take,

but this statement comes with the threat of targeted sanctions toward Israel. Is any of that likely to have a material impact on what we're seeing in Gaza right now and the actions of the current Israeli government? I absolutely think so. What do you mean? What's the possibility there of something coming out? Well, a trade agreement with the EU, which is Israel's largest trading partner, if that were to be suspended, right now they are talking about suspending negotiations for an enhanced

agreement. But they could suspend the agreement, we could suspend our bilateral agreement. There is always weapons exports that can be suspended. There are sanctions on ministers who say outrageous things. There are sanctions on the settlers

and the settlements that can be imposed and the regulations that are in place. who say outrageous things. There are sanctions on the settlers and the settlements that can be imposed. You can withdraw your ambassador. There are a lot of tools that can be used, but I think Israel is already beginning to feel the pressure and I think they the Israelis themselves want support from the international community and from the diaspora to end what they are experiencing within Israel and what we are seeing going on in Gaza. Certainly

these efforts by Israel are not helping to get the hostages out, which is Israel's, should be the Israeli government's primary responsibility, and is the Israeli people's primarily responsibility. John Allen, we'll leave it there. Good to talk to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. John Allen is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and a former Canadian ambassador to Israel. It was over 30 years ago that Clifford Olson first called me.

Secret phone calls from Canada's most notorious serial killer. I knew I was killing the children, but I couldn't stop myself. Now it's time to unearth the tapes because I believe there are still answers to be found. I'm Arlene Bynum from CBC's Uncover, Calls from a Killer, available now. After nearly three months of blockades of vital humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, five UN trucks entered the territory on Monday carrying the basic amount of aid promised by Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu. Another 93 trucks entered on Tuesday, but the UN says the aid has yet to be distributed as the organization waits for permission from the Israeli military to collect the supplies from the border crossing. Tom Fletcher is the Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator with the UN. He spoke about the aid on Monday. You know, let me describe what is on those trucks. This is baby food, baby nutrition.

There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them. This is not food that Hamas are going to steal. We run the risk of looting. We run the risks of being hit as part of the Israeli military offensive. We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they're malnourished. James Elder is a spokesperson for UNICEF. He's been in Gaza numerous times since this conflict began. He's in Geneva today. James, good morning to you. Matt, hi there. Good morning. I want to speak just at the beginning of our conversation about the impact of a statement

like this from Canada, France and the UK. What do you see as the possibility coming out of the statement like this and how significant is it in this moment? Look, Matt, it's hard for me to go politics as a humanitarian. I think, John, your previous guest covered it, but look, any pressure from influential governments is absolutely critical. And every person in Gaza knows that. And I also know that without it, without that pressure, without that leverage that we, the United Nations, have been calling for for 20 months, the horrors will only escalate.

The statements have been clear to that. So any pressure, no matter how late it may be, is absolutely fundamental if we're going to see aid flow across the Gaza Strip, if we're going to stop seeing children bombed as they sleep, and ultimately, yes, to get the hostages home. All those three things come with a ceasefire. Tom Fletcher said that 14,000 babies will die if critical aid isn't delivered to them in the next two days. He said that on Monday. Where are we at now?

Yeah, that that look where we are is that after nearly three months of a blockade, the entire Gaza population is at a very high risk of famine and that's coming from the world's foremost food security classification and acute malnutrition is increasing among children every single day. We saw a double as UNICEF during this blockade. So in the most simple sense, we can save these children if Israel allows us. And that's the if, the first, the start of this aid distribution or at least getting aid in. It's been a very difficult, very dangerous first 24 hours because it's been an 11-week blockade. It should

never have been allowed to get this bad. So our immediate priority is to try and get life-saving supplies to people. But of course, look, yes, we have to say that any pallet, any truck is valuable. But during the ceasefire, it was 500 humanitarian and commercial trucks a day, 500. That's what was needed given the level of deprivation that had been forced on Gaza. So when we talk about 500, 5100 trucks, the risk is here, Matt, that it's a smoke screen, that it's not real, that it really is just trying to align international pressure. It's not really addressing the root cause here, which is children, as you've heard, that the level of starvation of children. And, you know, it's important to look at that. I speak to

people almost every day in Gaza because of the contacts I made there. People speak about buying a portion of the vegetable. All the mothers I speak to talk about going days without food because they give it to their children. I've seen what starvation looks like. It's when a child who is screaming through pain because their body is starting to eat itself, first the fat, then the muscle, and then that child goes quiet and that stops crying and that's when the body has literally given up. And we're not hundreds of miles from aid. We have got literally enough food aid to supply to a million people for four months,

just the other side of the borders. That's what's so desperate and infuriating with what's gone on for, well, for 20 months in Gaza. Can I go back to what you just said about this possibly being a smokescreen? 93 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday. There were five UN trucks entered on Monday. There are concerns as to whether any of

that aid has actually been distributed and met the people who need it. When you suggest that there's a smoke dream, what's at the root of that? Well, as you've mentioned with your previous guest, Matt, the level of international pressure is huge and the statements we've heard from Israeli authorities make it very clear what their intentions are. Now, Gaza over 20 months has seen everything devastated and it's hard to quite capture that. When we say words like apocalyptic probably get overused. I've never seen anything like it and I've done this for more than 20 years. Every direction I would look is purely rubble. The fishing industry, the agricultural industry, the health industry, education, the pride of Gaza, the pride of the region, Palestinians literacy rate being devastated. And so we're, and of course, a police force. So when you destroy a police force, the

society, and then allow just one route for aid to come in, and that it's up to Israel, Israel are the ones who control the routes that the United Nations allowed to go and if they don't de- if they don't de-conflict it then we're at risk of being bombed. So they allow just one route when they allow one route after having 75 days of a full blockade we know they'll be looting they know they'll be looting give us multiple routes and give us hundreds of trucks and as we saw during the ceasefire, suddenly there's no looting because there's food in the markets, people have everything they need, there's incubators, there's medicines. At the moment, allowing a trickle of trucks down one simple route where we have no security apart from we won't be bombed, that's what I mean by those statements that

that we have to wonder about the sincerity here. As somebody who works in this field, how do you make sense of what's happening in Gaza, particularly in the face of international law? Yeah, it's very hard. I've almost, it's a very good question, man. I've almost started, I mean, there's talk of another form of aid going in, of a private company coming in,

and there's so many reasons why that doesn't work, and there's reasons of principle, and I've started to say, look, let's forget principle because that's been ignored and let's talk about the practicality. So it's very difficult. I walk in hospitals and I see doctors who have worked for 36 hours who are sleeping in tents because their homes have been bombed and they're walking over children who have missing limbs or who will need amputations and they're rushing from person to person. It's every direction you see. I've never seen these things. I've never, the first time I was in Gaza, Matt, in November 2023, I saw a little boy with the fourth degree burns. I didn't know

they existed and shrapnel wounds and all sorts of things, but he gave me this little thumbs up and I thought, wow, extraordinary. What a little guy. This guy's got some fight. He'll be okay. Then the adult with him explained that his mum and dad had been killed in the a little guy. This guy's got some fight, he'll be okay. Then the adult with him explained that his mum and dad had been killed in the airstrike, so had his brother and sister, so had his grandparents, so had his aunt, so had his cousins. I never thought I'd hear such a thing. And now after four or five visits to Gaza,

I've heard that dozens of times. So there's something very worrying now that this whole thing, a blockade for two and a half months that almost a thousand children have been killed in the last two months since the ceasefire ended. Lack of medicines, doctors having to operate without anesthetics. And this is somehow being normalized. It terrifies me for what's happened to international law, which has which has been a bedrock for the conflicts, no matter how bad they've been. That's the point. This shouldn't be called a war because wars have rules and what this is is destruction of a society brick by brick, child by child. So before I let you go, what will it take to get a path to ensuring

permanent aid deliveries into Gaza? Is it going to be the pressure from Canada, France, and the UK? Is it going to be the pressure that's coming from inside Israel, from former members, generals, senior generals at the IDF who are speaking out about this? In the last minute that we have, what will it take to get the aid in that people need? It's a great question, Matt. It was the negotiations the first time. So when we finally saw a ceasefire for those six or seven weeks, it was negotiations. And that's all those big actors, including the United States.

They are the fundamental ones who have leverage. So that it has to be that again, people have to be dragged to that table. And that ceasefire is everything. We, you know, as your previous guest said, Matt, the abhorrence of hostages being taken, of people somewhere, someone's sister or aunt in a tunnel. But let's be very clear, we want hostages home. And when there's been a ceasefire, when there's been those negotiations from pressure from those big governments, more than 150 people

have gone home under military means less than 10. So it's a ceasefire that lets AIDS flow that allows hostages to go home and it lets a parent promise their child, you know, you wake up tomorrow morning you won't be bombed in your sleep. James Elder will leave it there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.