Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman made sure to pick up the phone and call his counterpart in Ottawa this weekend to thank him for Canada's stance at the G8 summit last week.
Lieberman told John Baird, who recently came into the post, that Canada is a “true friend of Israel.”
Israel's foreign minister added that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been correct in his reading of the situation to know that the 1967-1949 Armistice lines are incompatible with the demographic realities in the Jewish State – and are indefensible as borders.
Harper blocked the G8 from issuing statements with any mention of the recommendation, stated by U.S. President Barack Obama in his Middle Eastern policy speech a week prior.
Although G8 leaders called for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the group's final communique issued Friday in Deauville, France, the “1967 lines” were not included.
A day later, the Arab League issued its own communique, stating it would support the Palestinian Authority's refusal to return to any negotiations.
Instead, the Arab League will back a bid by the PA to appeal directly to the United Nations for recognition of a new Arab country called “Palestine” in Gaza, Judea and Samaria with much of Jerusalem as its capital – including many areas where Jews currently live and work.
The “peace process follow up committee” at the Doha meeting in Qatar said it would request membership for the “State of Palestine” at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in September. Qatar is set to chair that meeting, according to the current rotation.
As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pointed out in his speech to the U.S. Congress last week, there are more than half a million Israelis, most of whom are Jewish, living in the areas claimed by the PA.
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