Montreal, Canada – “Unlivable.” That’s how Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, described the scenario within the Gaza Strip in late December.
The Palestinian territory was beneath fierce Israeli bombardment on the time. No less than 20,000 folks had been killed, and starvation was spreading at an alarming price as Israel blocked deliveries of meals, water and different requirements.
As circumstances continued to deteriorate, Miller introduced that the Canadian authorities was launching a particular visa programme to permit residents and everlasting residents to deliver prolonged relations from Gaza to Canada.
“To be clear, right now is about offering a humanitarian pathway to security and recognising the significance of maintaining households collectively given the continuing devastation,” he instructed reporters on December 21.
However greater than three months later, not a single Palestinian applicant has left the Gaza Strip on account of the visa programme.
That has fuelled a way of anger and frustration for households who say Canada has deserted them and their family members — and are demanding motion from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s authorities.
“What are they ready for?” requested Samar Alkhdour, a Palestinian mom who has lived in Canada since 2019 and obtained everlasting residency in February.
Alkhdour started a day by day sit-in exterior Miller’s workplace in Montreal, the second-largest metropolis in Canada, late final month to place strain on the federal government to get her family out of Gaza.
She is attempting to deliver her sister, her sister’s husband and their two youngsters — who’re at the moment dwelling with family in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza — to Montreal to affix her and her household.
However the household’s purposes stay within the early levels of the method, Alkhdour instructed Al Jazeera.
“I’m nonetheless preventing, I’m engaged on it,” she mentioned in late March on the sit-in, a black-and-white keffiyeh draped over her shoulders. “However deep down inside, in my coronary heart, I’m beginning to lose hope.
“And perhaps that’s one motive I’m right here — as a result of nobody’s doing nothing.”
