MONTREAL — Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Canada “within the next six months” specifically to have a “meaningful dialogue” with a cross-section of Canadian Jewry, The CJN has learned.

Mahmoud Abbas 

“It is confirmed,” Liberal MP Irwin Cotler disclosed in a recent interview in his Mount Royal riding office. “The raison d’etre for his visit to Canada is to meet with the Jewish community.

“The idea would be that he would meet with a representative group [of Canadian Jewry],” Cotler said. “Organizational heads, students, academics, business people, rabbinic leaders – a cross-section, for an open dialogue.”

The only Jewish community figure made aware of the visit so far is Canada-Israel Committee CEO Shimon Fogel, Cotler said.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry is not involved with arrangements for Abbas’ visit, he said.

It was arranged privately between Abbas and Cotler over the holiday season during one of Cotler’s regular visits to the Middle East, held in part to confer with officials in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the PA.

However, the meeting between Abbas and the Jewish community is being hosted officially by Cotler and the bipartisan committee he formed, the joint House-Senate Committee on Middle East Peace and Reconciliation.

The committee includes Cotler’s fellow Liberal MP, Bob Rae, as well as Conservative senators Linda Frum and Hugh Segal.

Efforts by The CJN to reach Fogel and the parliamentarians for comment were unsuccessful at press time.

As part of the visit, Cotler also expects Abbas to meet with “government people, parliamentarians, and the like.” The Foreign Ministry could conceivably be involved in that part of the trip, Cotler said.

He said Abbas, whom he first met in 1977 and has maintained contact with ever since, indicated to him last fall that he wanted to meet with Canadian Jewish leaders. Abbas previously has met with Jewish leaders in the United States and France.

While in the Middle East, Cotler met for three hours with Abbas and with PA Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki in Ramallah.

Cotler said Abbas and Malki were open to the idea of having a Canadian serve as “referee” in a revived Israeli-Palestinian group monitoring “incitement,” which is present in PA textbooks, media and mosques.

But he also quoted Abbas as saying that while he doesn’t deny that incitement against Israel takes place in the PA, “I’m not going to play the blame game. There’s also incitement on the Israeli side.”

Meeting with Netanyahu a week after Abbas, Cotler said the Israeli prime minister was also receptive to the idea of reviving the incitement-monitoring group, with a Canadian presence.

Netanyahu also indicated to Cotler his willingness to go to the PA to speak with Palestinians, as Abbas previously has done in Israel.

Cotler reported that Abbas reacted favourably to the idea of designating “one or two” Palestinians to be part of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. He said Abbas expressed regret that he couldn’t attend the coalition’s conference last November in Ottawa, although he did send a statement.

Similarly, Cotler related that Netanyahu was pleased by the adoption of the Ottawa Protocol at the conference and indicated his desire to attend the next one.

Things are “proceeding apace,” Cotler said, in efforts by Canada to reform the PA’s justice sector, efforts, he noted, that he’s pleased to see continuing under the Tory government.

Cotler would like to revive the idea of holding a “justice summit” for justice ministers from interested nations, a project he began after becoming justice minister in 2003 but which never saw the light of day when the Liberals were defeated in 2006.

On the peace process, Cotler said he emphasized to both Abbas and Netanyahu the importance of direct negotiations without preconditions on the overriding issues of security and borders.

“I said [former Egyptian president Anwar] Sadat and [former Israeli prime minister Menachem] Begin made peace because of direct and sustained negotiations,” Cotler related. “There were no Europeans, no international community, no Americans.”

A deal was achieved then and is possible now, Cotler believes, because each leader has the capacity to “carry the country” with a deal in hand and is “looking for his place in history.”