Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I remind Mr. O'Gorman and Mr. Higazi, in particular, to whom the question was addressed, about the piece of legislation referred to. I do not believe it is as simplistic as suggested by Senator Black. It is a light piece of legislation. The House will have an opportunity to discuss it. It is not just an issue of political will. There are some legal issues attached. However, I do not wish to pre-empt what Mr. Higazi might say by way of a response.

I will come back to Mr. O'Gorman and his team in response to the very strong contributions of Deputy Clarke and our visiting representatives from both Houses, Deputy Boyd Barrett and Senator Black. Deputy Boyd Barrett has asked for an elaboration of the terminology of "apartheid". As a reminder to members and, indeed, Mr. O'Gorman, last year we produced what we described, and was independently described as, a pretty comprehensive report calling for an end to practices we described as unacceptable. We forwarded copies to the Government and to the Houses of the Oireachtas.

I put it to Mr. O'Gorman and Mr. Higazi that, while we all acknowledge the importance of the report, we should go further in terms of next steps to look at the recommendations. For example, the report calls for an end to home demolitions. We already accepted that. The report calls for an end to forced evictions. We accept that. It states that Israel must grant equal rights to Palestinians in Israel and in the OPT, in line with principles of international human rights law. We have accepted that as a committee. It further calls on Israel to recognise the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return home, to where they or their families lived in the past. We, again, called for that. The report calls for the international community to step up its engagement to end the cycle of conflict. Nobody would disagree with that, least of all members of our all-party committee. However, I note that Amnesty's Israel chief criticised the group's report, which accused Israel of apartheid. One might expect a refusal by Israel to accept the report would not be in any way surprising. It is what one would expect from the usual suspects. However, it seems to me that there are suspects who may not be "usual". I refer to Molly Malekar when she said that Amnesty International's report is too sweeping an indictment, ignores human rights work and wrongly depicts Arab-Israelis as helpless victims. It was very strong criticism.

In addition to Senator Black's question, would Mr. Higazi like to comment on the head of the Ra'am party in Israel, Mansour Abbas, who said he would not use the word apartheid to describe relations between Jews and Arabs within the country? Mr. Abbas noted that he is in a position to join the cabinet, which he may well do. He felt that it was a little unhelpful to use the very strong terminology in the report. He is looking for solutions and to bring people together.

In terms of next steps for the report, I acknowledge that members of this committee and the Houses of the Oireachtas will have a role in what Deputy Boyd Barrett said about debates next week perhaps in the form of a motion from the Parliament. I have not seen the detail, but Deputy Boyd Barrett might help me in that regard. I thank Mr. O'Gorman for dealing with the queries and questions of the members so far.