The Canadian government insists on the necessity for Hamas to lay down its arms and surrender to Israel, after the Palestinian armed movement praised Canada as one of the countries calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

"Hamas cannot have any role in ruling the Gaza Strip in the future or in the two-state-based solution," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday at a press conference in Toronto, referring to the potential establishment of a Palestinian state living in peace alongside the state of Israel.

Hamas had published a video on Monday on the "Telegram" platform in which one of its senior officials, Ghazi Hamad, spoke about a joint statement issued last week by the Canadian Prime Minister and his Australian and New Zealand counterparts, Anthony Albanese and Christopher Luxon, in which the three said they support the international community’s efforts aimed at achieving a permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

The joint statement was issued on December 12th, ahead of Canada’s vote at the United Nations General Assembly in favor of a non-binding resolution calling for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, based on a proposal submitted by 21 Arab countries.

Canada’s vote also represented a significant shift from its previous stance of voting in favor of Israel on key decisions at the international organization.

In the video, in which he spoke in English, Hamad referred to the joint statement by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand after noting "increasing calls from several Western governments to end the aggression against the Gaza Strip," adding that Hamas welcomes these moves which come "in the right direction" towards isolating Israel.

Hamad ignored in his message the keenness of the heads of government of the three allied countries to repeatedly condemn "the terrorist attacks launched by Hamas on Israel on October 7" in their joint statement; these attacks resulted in the killing of approximately 1,140 people, most of whom were civilians, and the kidnapping of about 250 people taken by the attackers as hostages to the Gaza Strip, according to official Israeli data.

Hamad did not mention what the joint statement demanded from Hamas in any ceasefire.

"A ceasefire cannot be one-sided," said the three heads of government, "Hamas must release all hostages, stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and disarm."

"Hamas has no role in the future governance of the Gaza Strip," added the heads of government of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in their joint statement last week.

While the joint statement acknowledged Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, it reminded Israel that in "defending itself, it must respect international humanitarian law," that "civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected," and that "the price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians."

It is worth noting that after the October 7 attacks, Israel vowed to "eliminate" Hamas, besieged the Gaza Strip completely, bombed it heavily on an unprecedented scale, and launched a ground military operation there on October 27, resulting so far in the death of 20,057 people and injuring more than 50,000 others, most of them women, children, and persons under the age of 18, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas government.

The Israeli bombardment also caused the displacement of about 85% of the Gaza Strip’s population of approximately 2.3 million people and widespread destruction of property.