Melanie Joly: Evacuations of Canadians in Israel to start by end of ...

Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly arrives for a cabinet meeting in Ottawa on Sept. 26, 2023.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Canada will begin airlifting citizens out of Tel Aviv by the end of the week, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says.

Canadian Armed Forces aircraft will ferry Canadians, Canadian permanent residents and their children and spouses to Athens, Greece. From there, Ottawa has arranged for Air Canada aircraft to take passengers back to Canada.

The Canadian military is dispatching two CC-150 Polaris aircraft to pick up Canadians in Tel Aviv, General Wayne Eyre, chief of the defence staff, said.

Evacuation flights from Tel Aviv could begin as early as Thursday night local time but are more likely to begin Friday, senior government officials told reporters at a background briefing in Ottawa Wednesday.

The flights each have a capacity of 150 passengers.

The officials were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Ms. Joly said she wasn’t sure how many Canadians are looking for an airlift out of Israel. About 35,000 Canadians live in Israel on a permanent basis, but many of them have remained there throughout different conflicts.

She cautioned Canadians in Israel to make a decision soon on whether they want to leave because the Canadian government flights will not continue indefinitely.

“At one point, government flights will be over, and Canadians will have then to take the decisions on what will happen next,” the minister told reporters.

Canada is also sending a team of experts in hostage negotiations to help Israel as it grapples with the dozens taken hostage by Hamas, Ms. Joly said. Canada has been in touch with Israel’s chief hostage negotiator, she said. But Ms. Joly wouldn’t confirm whether three reportedly missing Canadians are among the hostages taken by Hamas because of the risk, she explained, that it would put them at greater danger.

“In any hostage negotiation we don’t confirm. Why? Because we don’t want to increase the value of that person in the eyes of their tyrants,” Ms. Joly said.

She said the government won’t confirm whether there are Canadian hostages.

Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a Canadian advocacy group, says he believes less than 1,000 Canadians would require a government-assisted flight home.

At the Wednesday government briefing, senior officials said about 1,000 people have contacted the Department of Global Affairs for assistance and they estimated roughly 70 per cent, or 700, were looking for an evacuation flight.

Government officials said Canadians will be expected to pay their own way home from Athens including any accommodation expenses. The Air Canada flights from Athens will head to Toronto and Montreal but details are not yet available. They did not provide any estimates and said they are looking for the lowest-cost option for the flights.

It remains unclear how Ottawa intends to help Canadians in the West Bank or Gaza, which is under siege by Israel after the Islamist group Hamas attacked the Mideast country on Saturday. Hamas is designated a terrorist group by Canada. About 500 Canadians have registered their presence in those areas with the Department of Global Affairs.

Ms. Joly said she’s looking at options for Canadians in the West Bank to head to Jordan, where they could board commercial flights. As for Gaza, she said, there are no plans at the moment.

“Should the United Nations work on an evacuation, we would be working with them,” she said of Gaza. “But at this point, there has been no information coming from the UN regarding evacuation as we speak, but we keep our options open.”

The Foreign Affairs Minister acknowledged Canada’s decision to airlift out Canadians and permanent residents is unusual given that commercial flights are still operating out of Israel. “This is quite rare,” she said.

Ms. Joly said the unreliability of commercial flights prompted Ottawa to act.

“There were so many cancellations. And also flights that were just indefinitely delayed, and people were not getting a real answer whether they would be rebooked. It created a big backlog,” she said. “Options were becoming much more limited. And so that’s why we decided to act.”

She also said the Canadian government sees itself as obligated to offer assistance. “I think it’s important that Canadians know that when they’re in parts of the world where conflict happens, well, we’re there to help.”

Canadian Jess Burke is stranded in Israel after she and her wife got married north of Tel Aviv a week ago. The couple and their wedding party were already supposed to have left the country but their initial flights were cancelled. They’re now in Jerusalem, which they hoped would be safer, and further away from rocket fire.

Ms. Burke, who is also a director with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a Canadian-based advocacy group, said they have booked dozens of flights this week but all of them have been almost immediately refunded and cancelled. One flight they were booked on did go ahead but at the time, she said the rocket fire around Tel Aviv was too intense to safely get to the airport.

Amid their rush to get flights she said attempts to reach the Canadian embassy were fruitless with no one answering the phones which would either ring through or go to an automated voice mail saying the embassy was closed. She said she and her family registered with the federal government and through its SOS e-mail but so far all they have received are auto replies asking for more information, telling them about rocket attacks they can see overhead, and warning them not to travel to Israel.

Until Ms. Joly’s statement Tuesday evening, Ms. Burke said it wasn’t clear that the government planned to do anything at all for stranded Canadians. “There was a point where I think people really wondered whether or not anything would be done,” Ms. Burke said.

In such a small country, she said everyone knows someone who was killed in Saturday’s attack from Hamas that left more than 1,200 dead. For example, she said her wife is going to a funeral in her home city in Israel on Wednesday, and asked one of her friends there to join them but he couldn’t because he is attending another funeral.

“It’s ripping through the community right now,” she said.

Conservative Party deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said Canada’s response remains unacceptable, noting that it’s been close to five days since Hamas first attacked Israel and Ottawa still has not provided clear details on when flights are leaving Israel.

“Governments from Europe, from the Americas, have already evacuated hundreds of citizens and Canadians are just in sitting in place just waiting for details,” Ms. Lantsman said.

“Despite this announcement, there are too many people left without answers who are trying to return home to Canada and there’s no certainty on how long it will take to evacuate Canadians.”

Preparations for flights home should have began on Saturday, Ms. Lantsman said.

She said MPs have received “hundreds of e-mails from people demanding answers, as early as this weekend when they received form responses from the government.”

Also on Wednesday, the federal government said there are now likely three Canadians who were killed in Saturday’s attack. Julie Sunday, Assistant Deputy Minister for Consular, Security and Emergency Management at the Department of Global Affairs, told reporters there are two confirmed Canadian deaths and now also a third who is presumed dead.

She said more details would be released later Wednesday.

Canada’s announcement follows action by other countries to repatriate their citizens including Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Thailand, Czechia and Argentina.