Carney says he wants a new world order. It must start in Gaza

Seven people, spanning three generations of one family, were burned alive late last month after an Israeli missile struck a tent encampment where they were sleeping in Gaza’s al-Mawasi area.

The oldest was Rebhi Abu Hadayed, 69, and the youngest was his granddaughter, five-year-old Laya. Rebhi was preparing to go to the mosque for morning prayers, and his brother, Mohammed, was already at the mosque when he heard the explosion.

Mohammed rushed back to find carnage. Two of Rebhi’s sons and one of their spouses had also been killed, along with two other grandchildren, seven-year-old Sham and eight-year-old Jebreel. And this was just the latest tragedy for their family: several other relatives had been killed previously in an Israeli attack last July.

The slaughter of Rebhi and his family came on a bloody day in Israel’s ongoing genocide, with at least 31 Palestinians killed, despite the “ceasefire” that began months earlier, on 10 October.

The slaughter began around 4am on 31 January, when Israeli warplanes targeted a residential building housing the al-Atbash family in western Gaza City, killing three children, their aunt and their grandmother. 

Also among the dead on that fateful day were seven-year-old Mohammed Rezeq and his grandmother, who lived near an Unrwa clinic in Gaza City. Around the same time, Israeli forces attacked the nearby Sheikh Radwan police station, killing 15 people, including six visitors and nine staff.

Between 31 January and 4 February ( five days), about 60 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. This amounts to an average of approximately 12 people killed each day, meaning that a Palestinian life has been taken roughly every 2 hours during this period of supposingly ceasefire.

These figures do not humanise the loss, but they do expose the relentless pace of destruction of palestinian life that words alone often fail to capture.

Decisive moment

Less than two weeks earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had made global headlines after delivering a forceful speech on the “old” and “new” world order at the World Economic Forum in Davos. 

Speaking at a decisive moment to a global audience grappling with protracted wars, and amid a crisis in the systems designed to protect civilians - including the steady erosion of international legal norms - Carney articulated a diagnosis that seemed to offer analytical clarity and moral resolve. 

When Palestinian lives were at stake, Carney looked away - not once, but at least 1,450 times

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient … And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” Carney said.

While Canada is not a great power, he said it has something just as important: “the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together”. 

“That is Canada’s path,” he declared. “We choose it openly and confidently.”

Carney followed his Davos speech with a statement days later, marking the occasion of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945. 

“Looking away,” he said, “is not a passive act, but an active betrayal.”

On 31 January, these noble words were tested in Gaza - and Canada failed utterly. When Palestinian lives were at stake, Carney looked away - not once, but at least 1,450 times. That is the reported number of ceasefire violations committed by Israel between 10 October and 31 January.

Betraying Gaza

This tally of violations includes 487 incidents of shooting at civilians, 71 raids of residential areas beyond the “yellow line”, 211 property demolitions, and 679 occasions of bombing and shelling. In addition, dozens of Palestinians from Gaza have been detained.

This data does not include Israel’s relentless bombing of Lebanon, nor its ongoing attacks across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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While pounding Palestinian civilians with bombs, Israel has also failed to allow an unfettered flow of aid into Gaza. Despite a commitment in the Trump administration’s 20-point plan that “full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip”, Israel continues to block vital humanitarian shipments. To date, only around 25,000 trucks out of 60,000 required have entered Gaza, according to local government officials.

As this evidence amasses, Carney’s silence actively betrays the suffering population of Gaza. 

As argued by Alex Neve, a former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, it is not only Carney’s silence that speaks volumes: “Israel’s renewed bombardment of Gaza [is] directly supported by a constant pipeline of weapons systems, components, and military technology originating in Canada.”

Carney’s Davos speech indicated that he would not “mourn” the death of the old world order. Indeed, civilians in Gaza, Sudan and Lebanon are well aware that international law was never sufficiently alive to protect them. But Canada under Carney still retains a moral - if not legal - obligation to ensure they can live in dignity and peace. 

Middle powers do not lose influence by defending these principles. They lose credibility by abandoning them just a few days after acknowledging the problem. If Canada’s true path is to name realities, it must start in Gaza.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.