This edited volume explores Canada's foreign policy relationship with the Palestinians and broader Middle East Peace Process (MEPP). Canada was intensively involved from 1992 to 2000 in peacebuilding as a mediator in the multilateral part of the MEPP, as chair of the Refugee Working Group, and sponsor of Track II negotiations. This all changed after a significant mid-2000s discursive and policy shift when Canada withdrew from the politics of Israel-Palestine peacebuilding and took a strong partisan stance in favour of Israel. Through 10 chapters by current and former government insiders and academics with extensive field experience, this unique edited volume offers insight into decades of evolution in Canadian policy toward the Palestinians, MEPP and the Middle East. It arrives at an important time when the international community is reconsidering how it views Israel's entrenched occupation of the Palestinians, after three failed decades of United States-led efforts to find peace through a negotiated two-state model. Today, peace may never have appeared further away after the Trump Administration adopted policies directly contradictory to the MEPP. This proved a test to Canada's own official policy toward Israel and Palestine, its longest running and most important region of engagement in the Middle East. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, guest edited by Jeremy Wildeman and Emma Swan.

Palestine solidarity activism is on the rise and under siege. Led by a coalition of students, labour unions, church groups, and Palestinian and Jewish community organizations, the movement advocating for Palestinian rights is forced to contend with relentless condemnation, legal sanctions, sidelining, and coordinated smear campaigns. Why is it so difficult to advocate for Palestine in Canada? This courageous book grapples with this question through a wide-ranging exploration of Palestine solidarity activism, linking the movement's connections with global struggles against racism, imperialism, and colonialism. Through this indispensable contribution to our understanding of the complex social and historical forces at work, Advocating for Palestine touches on our era's most urgent debates, linking histories and practices of settler colonialism and the meaning of solidarity today to the media's role in shaping public opinion and the relationship between Canadian foreign and domestic policy with the movement's strategy of boycotts and lessons from the South African anti-apartheid movement.