Palestinian Canadians condemn ‘betrayal’ of faltering Gaza visa scheme
Al Jazeera
Advocates call on Canada to apply pressure on Israel to get Palestinians approved for visas out of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Canadians have renewed their calls for Canada to take concrete action to get their loved ones out of the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s unrelenting bombardment, slamming a temporary Gaza visa scheme launched earlier this year as a failure.
Omar Omar, a representative of the advocacy group Gazan Families, said on Tuesday that he has been trying to get his relatives out of Gaza for months.
“It’s been over a year now, and I’m still asking that my family – stranded in Gaza, under the continuous threat of losing their lives at any moment – be treated with the same urgency, the same humanity, that Canada extended to others,” he said during a news conference in Ottawa.
“This long fight, this exhausting advocacy, has drained our resources and everything we have. We have lost so much back in Gaza, and here in Canada, this struggle is tearing apart the lives we have tried to build.”
The Canadian government launched the special Gaza visa programme earlier this year to allow Canadian citizens and permanent residents to apply to bring extended family members from Gaza to the country.
