Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

All that will allow is a truncated time for sound-bites.

By way of background in regard to Palestine, it is worth recalling that it is almost 100 years since it was invaded at the end of the First World War by the British under their commander, General Allenby. Interestingly, if one researches this one will find that an Irish division, which had come down from Macedonia at the end of that war, was charged and dispatched to take over the holy city of Jerusalem. The British held it under after the Second World War. With the consequences of the Holocaust and the huge numbers of Jewish refugees, and with the US not wanting to take in such a large influx, they were encouraged to re-establish their homeland in Palestine. The Israelis then drove out many of the Palestinians and killed very many of them in the process. Consequently, the displaced Palestinians have been scattered throughout the Middle East and elsewhere for almost a century now.

It is striking that anyone who visits the refugee camps there cannot but be touched by the predicament and the humanitarian crisis there is within those camps. I would encourage people who have not been there to visit the camps. One generally views refugee camps as a temporary arrangement until there is a resolution of whatever is the conflict and crisis. People have been living in some of these camps since 1948 in the most appalling of conditions. I have seen families living in one room, sleeping on the floor, in dangerous derelict buildings. In one instance in a refugee camp in Lebanon a shell hit the roof of a building during the Lebanese war and it had collapsed and people have been living under that in terrible conditions. It is a shame on society and particularly on international organisations such as the UN.

Those who live in Gaza and in the West Bank, and those of us who have been there will have witnessed this, suffer constant harassment from the Israeli authorities. This can only serve to radicalise particularly young Palestinians-----