Fiach MacConghail (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I extend my personal congratulations to Deputy Charles Flanagan on his recent appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs - comhghairdeas leis an Aire. I welcomed his statement yesterday on his desire to resume all-party talks in the North on issues such as flags, parades and the past. He is trying to get talks going again in September and I support him in that regard. It is a reminder to us in the Seanad not only of what we have gone through in our troubled and turbulent past but of what has yet to be achieved and resolved. Bizarrely, I see an increased number of Palestinian and Israeli flags being used in the North to consolidate the ethnic divisions which continue there.

I also welcome and acknowledge the presence of the ambassador of the State of Palestine, Ahmad Abdel-Razek, in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery.

There has been a lot of slagging about why the Seanad should even sit today and what it can do to shed further light on the Gaza and Ukraine situations. None of us here is stupid or arrogant to even pretend that we might have power or influence. Modestly, however, we are trying to fill a political void where the global political class has left a leadership vacuum which has led to this terrible conflict, particularly in Gaza. The UN, the EU, the US, Israel, Palestine, Russia and the Arab states have let the people of Palestine and Israel down with their inert equivocation and continuation of the policy of vague appeasement that has us sleepwalking into a massacre of civilians, including families and children.

When I mentioned I was speaking in the Seanad today on this issue, a friend asked me on which side I stood. That is the point. I do not want to be on any side. I want to stop the death, destruction and the war crimes committed by both sides over the past 23 days. I do not hear our global leaders intervening in the slaughter of innocent children. I do not hear the greatest bystander in international politics, the US President, Barack Obama, move swiftly to broker a ceasefire in Gaza in the way he has delivered with alacrity financial sanctions on Russia.

The genesis of today's conflict in Palestine and Israel goes back to an iconic year in our own history, 1916, when the Sykes-Picot agreement in May of that year paved the way for the British mandates in Palestine and Iraq alongside the French mandate in Syria-Lebanon that lasted until 1948. The five-minute arrangement between the French and the British at the 1919 Paris peace talks sealed a dirty deal which has impacted on the Middle East to this day. The enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in a sense unfinished business from that era with the major eruptions, the establishment of the state of Israel, or the Nakba of 1948, depending on whichever side one is on and, of course, the 1967 war. So when we debate the fate of Palestine and Israel today, we have to be mindful of the whole region, including what is happening in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. However, while this geopolitical context of the Gaza crisis is crucial, we do not have time to go into it today.

I mourn and condemn the illegal killings of civilians on both sides but, in particular, the shelling and massacre of innocent civilians in the most densely populated, prison-fenced ghetto in the world. They have nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape. Gaza is home to 1.8 million Palestinians, 80% of whom are classified by the United Nations as refugees. The blockade of Gaza has further impoverished the people who live there, contributing greatly to the sense of desperation and hopelessness that has acted as a breeding ground for extremists. According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, as of last night, 1,263 people have been killed, of which 852 were civilians, including 249 children and 135 women. OCHA also informed us that there are over 245,000 displaced people hosted in UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and registered government schools. The people killed and displaced are paying the price for a lethal combination, as Christian Aid states, "of political impotence and indifference to decades of Palestinian dispossession and displacement". Again, this is due to a lack of global political leadership.

This is where Ireland, as a neutral country, can play an important and influential role not for the sake of EU unity but to resolve the underlying conflict in Palestine. I have visited Palestine twice over the past nine months, once with Senator Marie-Louise O’Donnell. The one common emotion I have experienced on both sides is anxiety and fear, borne out of the memory and outcome of terror. The Israelis are terrorised by the threat of and fear of their personal safety, along with the rockets being fired by Hamas from Gaza. This fear is built on by further skewed and controlled information from the Israeli Government and further exacerbated by the fact that Israeli citizens are forbidden by law to enter into the occupied territories.

The fact remains, though, that Hamas has also committed war crimes in this current phase of the conflict. At a recent press conference, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: "I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan".

Israel's intention is clear. It wants permanent control over Palestinian lives and people.

This is a fact and if one is a Zionist or a moderate Israeli, one believes this. The consequence of this, however, is the atmosphere of psychological terror and oppression which I witnessed in the West Bank in Palestine - control of movements and jobs and restriction on housing, water, education and roads. Palestinian lives are determined by permits, permission and surveillance. I have seen the illegal settlements, the controlling zones of A, B and C, and the Kafkaesque wall, which was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 and declared illegal by several UN resolutions. These were ignored by Israel and the US and no action has been taken by the EU other than the continuing appeasement of Israel.
The growth of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the infrastructural network that links them has reduced Palestinian communities to a series of disconnected enclaves. The occupation of 60% of the West Bank by the Israeli military has created a discriminatory regime with two populations living separately in the same territory under two different systems of law. That is apartheid. While 500,000 settlers enjoy all the rights of Israeli citizens, Palestinians are subject to military law. Israel must be made realise that the failure to comply with international law will not last forever and that the occupation will begin to exact an economic price but that it also needs the benefits that it can derive from peace.
The terrible shelling of the UNRWA school in Gaza on Tuesday is a serious violation of international law. It is unusual for the acquiescent UN and the Commissioner General of UNRWA to be so strong in their condemnation. The Commissioner General said, "Today the world stands disgraced." He stated:

Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame.

Next Monday, on 4 August, we commemorate the outbreak of the First World War. There are lessons in history. There is a lesson that we need to realise. The unity of the EU at Council of Ministers level is not good enough for us to undermine the continuing humanitarian crisis.
I support the Seanad in calling for an immediate ceasefire, an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict, the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the immediate and unconditional opening of crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons from the Gaza Strip in line with the UN Security Council Resolution 1860. I also affirm the Irish Government's commitment to a long-term political solution based on structural change to the status quo. Finally, I publicly support the introduction of an EU-wide trade ban on settlement produce from the illegal Israeli settlements. It is a fallacy to believe that cyclical military invasions of Gaza will bring security to Israel. This policy will only lead to more violence and death on both sides. Until the international community begins to address the underlying causes of this conflict, we are doomed to repeat the tragic and utterly needless loss of human life we have seen over recent days.