Arabs trying to take revenge from Canada for supporting Israel

The Arab countries are trying to take revenge from Canada for its support of Israel, mainly by causing the UN to move the ICAO headquarters to Qatar.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets international rules for airplane transportation, has been headquartered in Montreal since 1947, but Qatar is now bidding to relocate it to the Middle East in 2016, trying to muster votes from 115 countries to approve the move at a meeting this fall.

Some Arab nations are now considering backing the bid as a potential focus for combined efforts to strike back at Canada for its stand on Palestinian issues. It would mark a new avenue for Arab countries that have criticized Ottawa before: a campaign that threatens concrete consequences.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s staunch support for Israel and close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his vocal campaign last fall against the Palestinian bid for observer-state status at the UN, has long been viewed with dismay by some Arab nations.

The backlash has been fuelled by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s April foray into east Jerusalem to meet an Israeli minister – a move many Arab countries viewed as a symbolic acceptance of Israeli control over land it occupied in 1967 in the Six-Day War, an area Palestinians want as the capital of a future state. Mr. Baird’s response to the furor appears to have stoked the reaction.

At an April 23 meeting in New York on Palestinian issues, Arab ambassadors to the United Nations devoted a section of their agenda to countering Canada, including mustering allies from other countries to vote against Ottawa in international organizations, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

Since that meeting, Qatar has made its new bid to take ICAO’s headquarters away from Montreal, and some Arab countries are eyeing moves to back it by campaigning to win the votes of other states, sources say.

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ICAO has 534 employees and 37 full-time foreign delegations in the city, and a 2012 analysis by consulting firm SECOR reported it brings $119-million a year to Montreal’s economy. Its offices are designated as emergency UN headquarters in the event of attack or disaster. If it is moved, Quebec’s Parti Québécois government, critical of the Conservatives’ foreign policy, would be expected to blame Ottawa for failing Quebec.

The bid to move it still faces daunting odds – requiring the votes of 60 per cent of ICAO’s 191 member nations.

Read the whole thing. It would be great to see the Arabs and the third world finally lose one at the United Nations.  Let's hope this is the one. In the meantime, Canada's House is backing Foreign Minister Baird's bid to keep the ICAO in Montreal.