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

I thank the Chair and committee. Most of all, I thank Amnesty International for what is an excellent report and one that has the most profound implications for anybody who accepts, which I believe they should, its findings and conclusions. It is an amazing thing to have, in such a forensic way, detailed the instances of oppression, discrimination and injustice that have been visited on Palestinians, which many might acknowledge. However, it goes further and explains that the policies of apartheid, oppression and persecution are not the incidental result of this or that government, rather are the outworkings of a system and state that is an apartheid state. It has been an apartheid state from its very foundation.

I would like Mr. O'Gorman and Mr. Higazi to comment on that point. I would say it is impossible to deny the systematic nature of the oppression, persecution and discrimination that Palestinians suffer. However, we are breaking new, and absolutely correct, ground in saying that those are the outworkings of an apartheid system and are written into the DNA of the Israeli state. That has very profound implications.

In my case, without any political tutoring I came to those conclusions in 1987 after a few weeks of working in an Israeli moshav in the Negev and then walking a few weeks later into Al Fawar refugee camp in Hebron. It was apparent to me in the first few weeks of the first Palestinian intifada that I could not describe what I saw as anything other than apartheid. It screamed at me that this was apartheid. It was systematic and institutionalised, and in the very nature of the state.

I would like Mr. O'Gorman and Mr. Higazi to elaborate a little on what that means. For example, much of the political debate, even though it has been critical of the Israeli state in the treatment of Palestinians, would say that if we change one bit of policy, behaved slightly differently elsewhere and worked genuinely towards a two-state solution maybe we could address the problem.

It seems to me, however, that that cannot resolve the problem. This is my view and I want to know if it is the view of Amnesty International resulting from its findings. The inevitable conclusion of this report and of the facts on the ground is that the apartheid system and the state that operates and is based on that apartheid system have to be dismantled. That has questions for the two-state solution. In fact, the two-state solution institutionalises apartheid, even by definition. Will either of the speakers comment on this? There is a certain analogy here to the extent that very few of us would accept a two-state solution to the conflict in Ireland. We would reject it. There is no two-state solution as that is a recipe for sectarian division and conflict in perpetuity. Yet much of the international narrative is that somehow a two-state apartheid segregation and separation of Jewish and Palestinian people is somehow a viable solution. Is it the conclusion based on this report that this is not only a fantasy but actually perpetuates the apartheid system because it is based on the separation of Jews and Arabs based on racial differences and that has very profound implications for how we understand the need to address this problem?

Amnesty International has argued for comprehensive sanctions. If we accept that Israel is an apartheid state, as evidenced by the Israeli law of return which gives Jewish people the right to return to the state of Israel even if they have never set foot in it but denies that right to millions of Palestinians, as set out in the basic law of the state, and extends to such things as the Jewish National Fund and its policies in regard to land and the nation-state law, do we have to say that it is not only about particular sets of sanctions to address this, but that we are duty-bound to have the same approach to the apartheid state of Israel as we had to the apartheid state of South Africa? Is that not inevitable? I ask Mr. O'Gorman and Mr. Higazi whether the inevitable conclusion one has to draw is that we simply cannot allow an apartheid state to persist and that we cannot give it any kind of legitimacy or credibility at any level if this is a system as bad, or arguably worse in its institutionalisation of apartheid structures, as the apartheid system of South Africa. Those are my questions. I commend the Amnesty International team again on putting together a fantastic report.

To give some breaking news, as well as the Seanad, the Dáil will also be discussing this report today. I asked for that today and the Chief Whip has indicated that the Dáil will also discuss the report next week. We have to make our decisions on this report and we have to act.