Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests, especially our former parliamentary colleague, Alan Shatter. I agree with the Chairman that the committee is doing its best throughout the process to be on the side of truth and objectivity. I certainly know the Chairman is doing his best in this regard. I would like to think that we, as members, are or should be.

At the outset, a few things need to be said because I want to get to the substantive things in the Amnesty International report.

While they have not been made today, suggestions that people who are critical of Israel are in some way anti-Semites could not be further from the truth. I can assure our guests of that. I can also assure them that, as the distinguished Chairman is aware, I studied history in college and enjoyed it. I am painfully and tragically aware of the history of the Jewish people. There is no escaping that one. It is the reality. Obviously, it has been an issue and might have prevented straight talking in the past and still does because nobody wants to deny that history.

I refer to the essence of the points made in the Amnesty report. I accept the point that, for Israeli people living in it, Israel is a model of democracy and a very progressive modern state with liberal values and so on. The real point here is that Amnesty says there is a distinction in the context of how Arabs within the Israeli state are dealt with and that it is not quite as draconian there, although the report refers to the displacement of the Bedouin Palestinians in the Negev or al-Naqab area. It cites that as an example of an internal issue. The real issue is not Israel itself but, rather, the occupied territories. That is what we are discussing. First, we are discussing the recent allegation that there was discrimination in the context of the provision of vaccines to 5 million Palestinians, which would be in breach of UN laws for occupied territories. It is alleged that a distinction was made in that context.

There is the issue of dispossession and resettlements in that area and a suggestion that those dispossessions and resettlements are making it impossible to have a two-state solution. Due to the way they are situated across the occupied territories, one could not smoothly create a two-state solution unless the people who have settled there were resettled back into Israel, which would be a difficult situation. It has been suggested that the purpose of that is almost to prevent a two-state solution and that we may have to come up with another solution.

The Amnesty report suggests, as does the recent report of Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur, that there are problems with water supply, natural resources, electricity and services such as garbage collection and so on in the occupied territories. It suggests there is a discriminatory set-up there, with military rule, with checkpoints, dispossession and a whole discriminatory process. Gaza has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. It is sort of a completely different economic zone. It is all these differences in the human rights and administrative regimes, as well as services, along with the dispossession of people, that leads to the charge of apartheid. Amnesty suggests this is being done on three levels. It is supported by the UN report.

I hope our guests will be the first to say that the present situation cannot continue. I know that one of the points they make relates to violence emanating from the occupied territories. Nobody supports such violence but, at the same time, the response is totally over the top and it is nearly providing a blanket situation for discrimination. Those are some my initial points to our guests. I am interested in their responses. The committee is genuinely in the business of finding out the truth and we are listening carefully to what they say. I had a very good meeting with the previous Israeli ambassador. I have no problem with anything like that. This is not about the demonisation of any race of people. As Senator Craughwell stated, it is about getting the right thing done. It is not in the interests of Israel or humanity to retain the status quoand the kind of regime and conditions that exist in the context of the 2 million people in Gaza, or on the West Bank or in Jerusalem. It is not in the interests of humanity for that to continue. Ultimately, as we know only too well from this island, such situations result in constant flare-ups. I ask our guests to address those issues.