Mr. Alan Shatter:

I will try to be brief because Mr. Haddad has covered a lot of ground. There are some specific things I wish to address. I will start where Mr. Haddad finished. It comes back to a question that was asked earlier. What can this committee, the Parliament and the Irish Government do to change the current reality and to end conflict? There are two things that can be done. We can avoid pandering to extremism and we can use the lessons of our own peace process. What is going on between Israelis and Palestinians is different but the lessons from our peace process are clear. If we genuinely want to see conflict resolved, as opposed to engaging in political point-scoring or running the narrative of one side or the other, we must encourage Israelis and Palestinians to engage in dialogue; encourage them to engage in normalising their relationships; and encourage them to discourage terrorism. On the Palestinian side, speak truth. We must tell them that when people were getting blown up and were dying on this island, it created greater division between communities, apart from the inhumanity of the atrocities that were committed. End the terrorism. End the sorts of events that took place in Israel in the past three weeks that not one member of this committee has yet referenced. Young mothers, a young Rabbi and two 19-year-old police officers were murdered on the streets. Tell the Palestinian Hamas leadership to stop celebrating death and destruction. Sweets were handed out in Gaza and the West Bank to applaud the knifing to death of three women. They were so happy about it they filmed the handing out of the sweets. Those videos are available to everyone on social media. Encourage them to stop celebrating death and encourage people to live. Encourage dialogue.

What is happening here, and I make no apology for saying it, is that there are Members of this Parliament, not only on this committee, who discourage the normalisation of relationships. They advocate the boycotting and demonisation of Israel. They damage the jobs of Palestinians created by joint Israeli-Palestinian companies. They foment discord and create obstacles to people engaging.

Having learnt from Ireland's peace process, let us encourage the Palestinian Authority to engage constructively with the Israeli side. Let us recognise reality. I never hear members of the committee address the issue of the granting of permits that Mr. Haddad has just addressed, which I will not raise again. I never hear members of the committee address the problem of Hamas in Gaza. The dreadful tragedies played out in Gaza are always depicted as caused by Israel. I have probably visited Gaza more frequently than some members of the committee. I have probably talked to more senior Palestinian leaders than some members of the committee. A terrorist organisation, Hamas, controls Gaza. It has no interest in a two-state solution. In Ireland we ignore that for 14.5 years there has not been a single Palestinian governed entity. There are two separate entities, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank and, as Mr. Haddad depicted, they are effectively at war with each other. The Fatah Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, deprives Gaza of resources because he does not want resources to be used by Hamas. The tragedy of Gaza is created by Hamas.

I was one of the Members of the Dáil who, in my many visits to Israel and in meeting Palestinian leaders, pre-2005, had meetings and discussions with Israeli Government ministers encouraging Israel, as a first step towards a two-state solution, to withdraw from Gaza to allow it to develop its own independent economy and to create an atmosphere for future engagement. A section regarded as the Israeli right wing opposed that. It said no, that doing that would be a disaster. Many other European political leaders made the same statement to Israeli leaders, and the Israelis withdrew from Gaza.

Gaza is a disaster in certain places. It is very well developed in some areas, which members of the committee do not realise. The disaster that is Gaza, for many of the people living in Gaza, derives from one thing and one thing only, that is, that Hamas denies the legitimacy of the Israeli state, feels free to fire rockets at it when it so chooses, has created a series of different wars and, instead of using the massive international aid it has received to develop Gaza, has spent multiple mullions of euro and dollars on constructing tunnels.

I think some members of the committee do not realise that things said on occasion in the committee do not reflect even mainstream Palestinian views. The Palestinians have some legitimate issues over which to criticise Israel, and I have personally voiced those criticisms in the past to Israeli ministers. What members of the committee do not realise, however, is the first obstruction and blockage to conflict resolution and to addressing the issues Deputy Ó Murchú raised. He said the occupation has been going on for 50-odd years. I would probably be a year out if I were to repeat the number, but he said the occupation has been going on for a very long time. The occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, and then Gaza was taken over by a group that the entirety of the European Union recognises as a terrorist group, which then proceeded on a nihilistic journey down the route of continuing wars with Israelis, arbitrarily and indiscriminately firing not just rockets into Israel, killing civilians, but also a series of incendiary devices that, environmentally, have destroyed thousands of acres of Israeli afforestation. The committee never discusses that. If Deputy Ó Murchú is serious about his interest in this issue, I would love to hear members of the committee say we should have reconciliation between the warring Palestinian groups and have the first election held in the Palestinian territories since 2006. Mahmoud Abbas was elected for a period of five years in 2005 and he is still there in 2022. Let us have constructive engagement to improve economic development in both Gaza and the West Bank.

What could Ireland do? Every Member in this room is familiar with the multiple millions of dollars that went into the Ireland Funds from the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, contributed by this Government and donated. The Ireland Funds made a huge contribution to economic development in Northern Ireland and to bringing Northern Irish communities together. A replica of the Ireland Funds was created by the United States Congress approximately 18 months to two years ago, with $250 million put into it for joint Israeli-Palestinian ventures to encourage intercommunity dialogue and engagement and to create economic development. When that fund was created, like our own funds, it laid down a foundation to enable other countries across the world to join into it. It is not a fund solely governed or administered by the American Government. We in this country could engage with that fund to encourage dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. That is just some of what we can do. I plead with members of the committee not to be in denial. Yes, there are things the Israeli Government has got wrong over the years - I readily admit that - but not all the difficulties and faults lay on the Israeli side.

When I was Minister for Justice and Equality, visiting the West Bank and Gaza, one of the great problems was the multiplicity of police forces, the lack of training of police forces and the lack of functioning civil institutions. Shortly before I ceased to be Minister, when visiting the West Bank and meeting the Palestinian Minister of Justice, I arranged that 50 Palestinian policemen would come to be trained in Dublin by An Garda Síochána to deal with civil issues. I do not know whether they ever came because I ceased to be Minister. Those are practical things. I refer to institution-building within the West Bank. The courts there are not independent. People are being tortured by their fellow Palestinians. Women are being assaulted. Individuals are being murdered within the Palestinian Authority territory. No one in the Irish Parliament ever speaks on their behalf.

Interestingly, there is a very interesting, very recently published Amnesty International report on the plight of Palestinians in 2021 in Gaza and the West Bank and the failures and corruption of the Administrations in both the West Bank and Gaza. Practically none of that information is contained in the Amnesty report that came before the committee. Why is that? Because the reports are prepared by different groups within Amnesty.