Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Sourani for his presentation. The issue of the torture of prisoners is of concern to Ireland. What Ireland can do is win the case of the hooded men in the European courts. That case has been used for the justification of enhanced interrogation techniques such as food and sleep deprivation, white noise, and stress postilions. Ireland lost that case against the British Government in the 1970s but there has been further evidence on the effects of that torture on those people. If that case is won, it would mean that countries such as Israel could no longer use those techniques because they would be officially deemed as torture. That is something that Ireland can do but we must win that case because it is not only about the hooded men but also about countries using a European Court ruling from the 1970s as justification to do to Palestinians what was done in the North of Ireland.

I have been to Israel, the West Bank and Palestine. It is a most distressing situation. In Jerusalem they are buying houses house by house and community by community. There is a famous quote by a Prime Minister of Israel who said that as resolutions were being passed when they were building settlements, they were passing resolutions but he was creating facts. The facts they were creating were settlements in the West Bank. We know from our own history the consequences of settlements centuries later.

The United States is a big player in this and it can bring influence to bear because without the United States, Israel can do as it wishes. The United States has had a very positive influence on previous peace negotiations. The Irish Defence Forces have been in Lebanon. There is a very telling book written by a member of the Irish Defence Forces in which he points out that because of an Israeli Defence Forces targeted attack on a compound of women and children in southern Lebanon which killed hundreds of women and children, one of the 9/11 attackers, on seeing the TV report of that attack that killed innocent women and children, decided to join the jihad. That is why he flew a plane into the Twin Towers. If that is not enough of a compelling reason to change the situation in Israel and Palestine, General Petraeus and General McChrystal have said quite clearly that US foreign policy in the Middle East is killing US soldiers. There is no more compelling reason for the United States to change its course on Palestine, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank than that, yet we see no change. Unfortunately, the settlements continue to grow. When Ronald Reagan was President of the United States, there were 40,000 settlers in the West Bank. Today there are half a million, and that figure continues to grow. It is a problem that will only get worse and become more intractable.

Ireland's role in helping the people of Palestine is winning the case of the hooded men to ensure that when Mr. Sourani goes back into court, the Israeli Government cannot use that European Court ruling as a defence for what is really torture and which was wrongly classified as enhanced interrogation techniques by the European courts because they were misled and information was withheld from them.