Canadian author Saeed Teebi weighs in on Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state

Saeed Teebi speaks about his family's displacement from Gaza in his book You Will Not Kill Our Imagination.

A Palestinian writer and lawyer who lives in Toronto says he welcomes Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state – but with a caveat.

“Any movement in the direction of understanding and seeing and recognizing Palestine is always a positive one,” Saeed Teebi told CTV News.

However, he also said, “this risks being and looking performative,” warning Canada “still has yet to issue sanctions against Israel.”

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

Teebi’s new book You Will Not Kill Our Imagination will be published Sept. 30.

The author was born in Kuwait but now lives in Toronto.

His family was displaced from the Palestinian territories decades ago, but Teebi takes pride in his Palestinian identity.

“For large periods of my life, there was a certain level of hiding our identity or cloaking it in some way, and it’s the kind of invisibility that later in life I decided to fight against.”