Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade

Situation in Palestine: Discussion

10:00 am

Photo of Mark DalyMark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to voice concerns about Khalida Jarrar and her continued administrative detention. Irrespective of her background and politics, she is entitled to due process.

General McChrystal said, "for every innocent person you kill, you create ten new enemies." That obviously seems to be the case not only in Palestine and Syria but throughout the Middle East. As a policy it is obviously self-defeating. What Dr. Sabella said in his contribution is obviously depressing because things have got worse.

The Deputy spoke about facts. People are passing motions and having meetings but, in reality, the Israelis are creating facts in terms of the settlements. The facts are that when Ronald Reagan was US President, there were only 30,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank. Now there are more than 500,000 and the number continues to grow. The Israelis are continuing a policy that started after the Second World War when they arrived on the beaches at Tel Aviv and from there have expanded ever further into the West Bank. They have now done so to such an extent that the process will become irreversible. That is the concern. Israel puts people into an area and claims they will not move while insisting that those who currently form the indigenous community there must do so. Obviously, the retort to that is that they were there generations, centuries and millennia ago. The history of the Holy Land is such that so many people have been there previously the entire world might be entitled to claim some piece of it.

I have been there and do not know where it goes next because Europe is doing nothing and the US is not being allowed to do anything by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, and other Israeli lobbies in America. It is hard to see where it goes because they do not need to negotiate with the Palestinians. They have what they want and they will continue to get more. Unfortunately, the lack of unity within the Palestinian community in the different groups in Gaza and the West Bank appears to be the perfect textbook policy of divide and conquer. As long as Palestine is divided, they will continue to conquer.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.