Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the points made by Deputy O'Sullivan. I regret that the EU is not elevating more the issue of Syria and the role being played by Israel at present in the Middle East, not least the recent announcement of Israel's expansion plan into 40 km of the Golan Heights, effectively annexing another chunk of Syria, with the help of al-Qaeda allies, the Golan Knights, who have been appointed as border guards. When it is not exploiting the horrific slaughter in Syria to grab more land for itself, the fact that Israel is flagrantly breaching Syrian sovereignty is absolutely appalling. The head of the Israeli airforce recently proudly boasted that it had carried out thousands of missions in Syria in the past year alone. None of the attacks was carried out in response to military action emanating from Syria and none could be justified as legitimate self defence. They were all in flagrant breach of international law. As a neutral country we should be raising those issues in the EU. In that context the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, was very helpful last year when a group of Irish citizens was deported from Israel in September 2017. Sadly, last weekend two other Irish citizens were again deported from Israel. They were part of a group of 22, mainly Irish people, who landed in Tel Aviv on a flight from Istanbul on the evening of Friday, 16 March. They wanted to take part in a study trip meeting Israelis and Palestinians and to see for themselves what was going on in the area. Most of those people had never been to that country or area before. They ranged in age from 20 to 80.

Some of them were planning to have St. Patrick's Day celebrations in a refugee camp in Bethlehem. Sadly, they were intercepted at the airport in Tel Aviv, held for seven hours and subjected to massively aggressive questioning. Two of those citizens were deported, having spent over seven hours in a dirty room with no natural light or fresh air. Appalling newspaper articles appeared about those people claiming that they had been in Palestine previously, that they had taken part in violent protests and so on. They had never been to Palestine previously. One was a young Kildare mother of two small children and the other a young man fulfilling a lifetime dream to go to the area and meet people, and they were deported. We offer hospitable contact to Israelis coming to this country. The least they could do is afford the same respect to our citizens who go to their shores. I expect the Government to be raising these points with our peers in the EU.

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