Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Mary White for her comments. I am afraid my oratorical skills, such as they are, desert me in the face of the savagery and loss of life we have seen. Like others, I welcome the Minister and thank him for his balanced and objective statement at the beginning of this debate. I also echo the compliments paid to Senators Darragh O'Brien, Averil Power and others who proposed the recall of the Members of the House. I congratulate the Leader of the House and the Cathaoirleach on acceding to the request. I was impressed by the contributions from all sides of the House and I think the status of this House has been enhanced in the eyes of the public. I am pleased to see so many members of the media here and I am sure they will share the same impression of this debate.

We seem to see ourselves as honest brokers who can affect change in this crisis due to our history and neutrality. This is wrong because Israel views Ireland as a hostile state that is unequivocally supportive of the Palestinian cause. Suggestions that the Israeli ambassador should be removed from Ireland are misplaced. At least a line of communication direct to Tel Aviv is open but what benefit could accrue from the removal of the ambassador? The removal of the ambassador would only throw us into darkness and confirm the view of the Israeli people that we are hostile to them. I do not believe we are hostile to Israel but they do. Some 90% of the population of Israel supports the current government and the Israeli defence forces, IDF. We must face the fact that 90% of Israelis support what is happening in Gaza.

I am very pleased that some Members of the House who support the Palestinian cause have taken account of the contribution of Hamas to the crisis. It is only right and proper that this debate should be balanced. Hamas has fired over 2,600 rockets into Israel and it is only thanks to Iron Dome that the number of people killed on the Israeli side does not match that on the Palestinian side. Millions of Israeli citizens must attend air raid shelters five times per day. If the Members of this House lived in Israel would they sit back and do nothing in response to this? Would they allow the rockets to continue and instead pray Iron Dome saves their lives? This is what the Israelis face.

What does Hamas face? As has been pointed out, Gaza is a city-state that is no bigger than Limerick but has 1.5 million people crammed into it. Where are the rockets being launched from? As they are launched from the heart of the Gaza enclave, the Israeli response is inevitable. I am not justifying the actions of the Israelis. I take the same view as Senator David Norris and believe human rights are the same for all, irrespective of the sides involved. Any state or entity that engages in the abuse of human rights should be held accountable. The Israeli army must bear some responsibility for the number of women and children who are casualties. The Israelis encouraged people to take refuge in UN schools, but yesterday I heard a lieutenant colonel of the IDF try to justify the killing of women and children who had taken refuge at a UN school. He said, "We knew missiles were being launched from a building near the school."

However, the United Nations has indicated that it informed the Israeli army of the co-ordinates of the school on 17 occasions. Using modern technology, the Israeli army should have been able to pinpoint from where those missiles were actually being launched. This is not the first occasion on which the IDF has acted in this way. It did something similar in the Golan Heights several years ago and a number of Irish soldiers were killed as a result. On that occasion the United Nations provided the IDF with the relevant co-ordinates, not once but on several occasions. Again, the IDF blew the target involved out of existence.

Like several previous speakers, I am of the view that there is a right-wing government in place in Israel and that there is a strongly hawkish element within the IDF which wants to take out the Palestinian people once and for all. The Israeli authorities continue to ignore international pleas to bring their policy on settlements to an end. When I visited Israel I argued that the we in Ireland know much more about the impact of settlements on a native population than do the citizens of any other nation in the world because we are still living with the legacy of the plantation of the country 400 years ago and continuing to try to resolve the issues relating to the replacement and relocation of people from one entity into another. The latter, of course, reflects what the Israelis are doing on the West Bank and in Gaza.

Ireland cannot be an honest broker in respect of this matter in light of the perception that exists in Israel. However, it can take action internationally and, as the Minister, Deputy Charles Flanagan has done, within the European Union. I will not go into the details with regard to last week's vote but I am of the view that Ireland made a very strong contribution in terms of ensuring there was at least some solidarity surrounding the abstention. If such solidarity had not been achieved, then a number of countries within the European Union would probably have voted against the relevant motion. The latter was what many people wanted. Ireland also has a very proud record within the United Nations. The fora to which I refer can be used to bring Israel and Hamas together. This must be done because, as Churchill stated, "To jaw-jaw always is better than to war-war." More than our counterparts in any other country in the world, we in Ireland know that it is only through discussion and negotiation that age-old problems which are somewhat similar to those in the Middle East can be solved.