Professor S. Michael Lynk:

Think of what the alternatives are. I think there are probably four that are here. One is that there is a genuine two-state solution, which means removing all or almost all of the Israeli settlements. Israel had a political nervous breakdown when it removed 8,000 Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005. The possibilities of wanting to remove 700,000 or a vast bulk of those 700,000 Israeli settlers is minimal.

A second solution would be what I would call a state-and-a-half solution, which is what the Trump plan was. A little rump area of land in the middle of the West Bank where the major Palestinian cities are would be given to the Palestinians, all the rest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank would be annexed to Israel and Gaza would be left in its orphan state of 2 million people of a surplus population. A third solution is one apartheid state, if you like, from the river to the sea, which is actually what I am now proclaiming has happened.

It does not matter, and this was made clear in the resolution from the Dáil last year, whether there is a formal declaration of sovereignty over the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean or it is continued de factoannexation. Let me be clear as a lawyer - de factoannexation is just as illegal in international law as de jureannexation. It is, in fact, a continuation of what it is now, without even the pretence of saying the Palestinians will have a state. They may have municipal powers to collect garbage in Ramallah, to look after the streetlights in Hebron and to have a sewer line in Jenin, but that is all they will have.

The last solution would be a one-state, democratic, one-person-one-vote solution. With the demographic parity between Israelis and Palestinians, the population today is 6.9 million Israeli Jews and 6.9 million Palestinian Arabs. I do not know if many of the members know of Professor Avi Shlaim, an Israeli-Anglo professor of history who is now retired from the University of Oxford. He said he believed in a two-state solution for a long time when it was possible. He says he no longer believes in that because he is not going to tell himself fairy tales. He asked what could be more consistent with 21st century values than a state that is democratic, believes in human rights and believes in the equality of everybody in the population. What a one-state democratic solution would offer would be much more consistent with what I believe the world is moving towards in this century than any of the other solutions.

For a long time I believed that a two-state solution would be the best. It would work because it would separate the populations and Palestinians would have a majority state where they would be able to rule. However, Israel, its settlements and its encroachment have made a two-state solution impossible, unless one starts removing 500,000 to 700,000 Israeli Jews from settlements that have been established. If one looks across the Israeli political spectrum from the centre through to the far right, two thirds of the seats in the 120-seat Knesset are controlled by parties that do not say there should be a Palestinian state. It is not in their programme. There have been four elections in Israel in the past two and a half years and the future of a Palestinian state was not part of any of the debates in any of the four elections, so I so not see that occurring.

The Senator asked a very timely question about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and it is an eternally timely question. I will try to keep my answers short on this. There are two different, separate lessons one can draw from the Holocaust. One is that the brutality of the murder of 6 million European Jews means never again to Jews, or it can mean a more universal lesson of never again to anybody with respect to gross violations of human rights. My view is that the best tribute we can pay to the victims of the Holocaust and all the victims of the Second World War and what happened afterwards is to enforce and entrench a regime of human rights everywhere in the world. Professor Edward Said, the famous Palestinian-American, once said the Palestinians are the victims of the victims. That is one of the most apt ways I can think of to describe that situation. Jews in general, but Israeli Jews in particular, many of them coming from families that escaped the Holocaust, bear deep wounds, but Palestinians bear deep wounds as well. Any type of compassionate peace that we will reach has to recognise addressing the deep wounds that both have, but also make sure that the final resolution is on the basis not of subjugation or domination but on the basis of some form of creative equality.

The fourth question has to do with accountability and I believe the Senator is asking me what we should be doing in this respect. Israel will not change its position. Perhaps I am repeating the answer I gave to the question from Deputy Brady in this regard. International accountability is the prerequisite to get moving on change here. There is no such thing as a diplomatic magic sauce that is going to bring a genuine durable solution that is acceptable to the Palestinians and the Israelis without pressure on Israel. As long as Israel does not feel the cost of maintaining this type of occupation and as long as it faces no diplomatic cost, no trade cost or economic cost, I am afraid it is not going to be moving its policies with respect to this.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of the four Geneva Conventions and a relatively conservative international organisation, has created a long list of acceptable sanctions and accountability measures that have long precedent in the world over the last 70 years to be applied to countries or organisations that step outside the international legal order. If it can come up with sanctions such as limitations to or ends of arms sales, limitations to or ends with respect to trade deals and other forms of sanctioning of countries diplomatically or economically and those are acceptable methods in the modern world, they are acceptable in a method with respect to Israel. I have heard the argument often used to me or anybody else that what we are really doing by raising these is attempting to delegitimise Israel, the only Jewish state. What I and Israelis of conscience are trying to do is delegitimise an illegal occupation and to be able to bring about equality between them.

The final point the Senator raised, which is again a very good question, has to do with Ukraine. The fact that we are now talking about international law, the breaches of international law and the swiftness with which we impose accountability measures on a country going rogue gives hope with regard to Israel and Palestine and that we will begin to make the necessary parallels between the two. I am torn in that respect. I have been around long enough to know that, in a positive way, George H. W. Bush in 1991, after the end of the first Iraq war and the removal of Iraq from Kuwait following its invasion and occupation, moved immediately to address the issue of Israel and Palestine by creating the Madrid process, which led to the Oslo process. Sometimes turning points in history can wind up meaning something positive. At least there was a formal recognition of the question of Palestine and the start of a peace process, however flawed. However, I am also old enough and around long enough to know that sometimes history comes to a turning point and does not turn. I would not be surprised if a year from now, if we have some type of resolution in respect of Russia and Ukraine, we have forgotten about the Palestinians again, unless and until something dramatic and awful happens again there. That is why we need to keep the issue of accountability in mind.

I thank the Senator for his questions. They were bang on.