Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I apologise if the witnesses have commented on this already. Israel has favoured trade status with the European Union through the Euro-Mediterranean association agreements and witnesses may be aware there have been loud calls from those who support the plight of the Palestinians that the agreement should be suspended because of the systematic breaches of human rights and international law by Israel in terms of its treatment of Palestinians. That is whether it is the collective punishment of the siege, the recognition of Jerusalem or, as was highlighted with the "Great March of Return", the denial of the right to return, which is a right afforded under international law. As the witnesses have highlighted, there is also the destruction of works funded by the European Union on Palestinian territory. Do the witnesses echo the call of all of those things and more? Large numbers of young people are held in administrative detention. We can go through an endless list that includes the demolition of Palestinian homes and the illegal annexation of Palestinian territory. At what point will Europe say that this is not unacceptable and we will not continue giving Israel effective associate membership of the European Union? It is absolutely extraordinary. I am keen for the witnesses to comment on that.

I mentioned the Great March of Return and its significance. It was a tremendously brave, heroic and peaceful protest that tried to vindicate a right under international law that Israel would rather everybody forget. It likes to cast this as an intractable conflict between Jews and Arabs when it is not. What should we say about the right to return, as it is a line for me that should not be crossed? It is an international right and there is no solution for the Palestinians. I was just in Beirut visiting Palestinian refugee camps and I have been to the West Bank. The conditions for Palestinian refugees in Beirut are worse than they are in the occupied territories. They are horrendous and the idea that there is any solution that leaves them out in the cold and does not give them or millions of other Palestinians imprisoned in refugee camps outside Palestine a right to return is unacceptable. What do the witnesses think of that?

The Israeli siege of Gaza is shocking and obscene. As a result, humanitarian conditions in Gaza are beyond belief.

At the centre of justifying that siege has been the refusal of the Israelis and the European Union to recognise certain political forces that were democratically elected. What does Mr. Costello think of the effective boycott of certain Palestinian factions which have a democratic mandate in Gaza? Whatever we may think of those political forces should we not acknowledge their democratic mandate and call Israel out on that? It cannot justify this siege on the basis that it is trying to because, apart from the humanitarian horrors it is producing in Gaza, it flies in the face of democracy.