Canadian troops working in occupied Palestine attended a seminar showcasing Israel’s methods in waging its genocidal war on Gaza last year, The Maple has learned.
The seminar was organized by the Israeli military in November in order to “strengthen cooperation, enhance familiarity with diverse operational approaches, exchange professional knowledge and experience between the participating militaries,” according to Israeli media reports.
Those same reports named Canada as one of several countries that sent delegates to the seminar, but Defence Minister David McGuinty said at the time that he could not confirm this.
Nearly four months later, Department of National Defence (DND) spokesperson Daniel Blouin told The Maple that Canadians did participate, and that those in attendance included RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel deployed as part of Operation PROTEUS.
The purpose of Operation PROTEUS is to help train Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) in the occupied West Bank under the leadership of the United States Office of the Security Coordinator, which was established in 2005 as part of the Oslo peace process.
However, the PASF has long been accused of serving as a “sub-contractor” of Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, as they work in co-ordination with Israeli forces to suppress Palestinian resistance.
The fact that Canadian personnel involved with training those forces attended a seminar showcasing Israel’s genocidal methods in Gaza is a major concern, said Muhannad Ayyash, a sociology professor at Mount Royal University.
Their attendance, he said, highlights the fact that Canadian forces are in Palestine as “Israel’s staunch allies,” rather than neutral players.
“They’re there allegedly to help the Palestinian Authority develop its security infrastructure so that it can ensure the safety of Palestinians, and what they’re doing is going and being briefed by the Israelis on how to commit genocide and get away with it.”
“When people talk about Canada as part of the problem, not part of the solution, it’s precisely this kind of thing that we’re talking about.”
Blouin said the participation of Canadian troops “reinforced Canada’s role as a committed partner to the peace process.”
“The focus of the conference was military operations, including in the areas of counter-terrorism, responding to asymmetric threats, and the integration of intelligence into operational planning.”
“Attendance at this conference is not an endorsement of the operations of foreign militaries,” he said.
The seminar, titled “Lessons Learned From the Frontline,” was held two months after the United Nations declared that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Other Canadian participants in the seminar included members of the Canadian Defence Attaché office in Israel and one member from the Canadian Forces College, according to Blouin. Representatives from 17 other “allies and partners” also attended.
As previously reported by The Maple, the defence attaché attended a briefing in 2024 by a prominent Israeli academic who has publicly compared Palestinians to cockroaches.
The Maple sent a series of follow up questions regarding concerns about Canada’s participation in the seminar, but did not receive a response.
Canada’s Role In The Occupation
The PASF was established in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the peace agreement which ostensibly set up a roadmap toward establishing an independent Palestinian state as part of what is often dubbed the “two-state solution.”
In practice, however, Israel maintained its occupation of Palestinian land that it captured in the 1967 war, and has drastically expanded illegal Jewish settlements on that occupied territory.
When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, there were around 110,000 Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank. Today, there are more than 700,000.
Many Jewish settlers are extremely violent and regularly carry out pogroms against Palestinians, often with direct assistance from the Israeli military and encouragement from Israel’s Jewish supremacist government. The PASF, Ayyash explained, offers no protection against such attacks.
Instead, the PASF regularly carries out raids on Palestinian groups who resist Israel’s occupation. In December 2024, a raid on Palestinian resistance groups in Jenin reignited longstanding criticisms that the Palestinian Authority helps carry out the Israeli occupation’s dirty work. As a result, the PASF is widely resented among the Palestinian population.
According to the Operation PROTEUS website, Canada provides the PASF with training and support, and helps with the development of “better systems for logistics.” The larger goal, according to the website, is to “develop the Palestinian Authority’s ability to keep its citizens safe and secure.”
However, the Canadian forces “don’t do anything to train the Palestinian Authority to protect Palestinians from their number one threat, which are the settlers,” said Ayyash.
“I dare any Canadian official to tell us otherwise.”
International forces are prohibited from engaging with Jewish settlers, but according to reporting by The Globe and Mail, the security co-ordinator’s mission has increasingly focused on monitoring settler violence.
However, in an interview with the National Post in December 2024, Lieut-Gen. Frédéric Pruneau admitted: “[Palestinians] see that the Israelis can operate freely in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority Security Forces can’t do anything about it … ‘What are you doing for me when the Israelis are coming to my home and destroying my home?’”
According to DND’s recently published departmental plan, the annual budget for Operation PROTEUS is set to increase by 58 per cent to $20.7 million next year.
