Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to the contributions stating that nobody could stand over the savagery and barbarism carried out by Hamas in Israel. As Deputy Carthy said, it was an absolute breach of international law. This must be our starting point. I agree with everyone that there is a certain element of despondency concerning where we go from here. We welcome some of the actions taken by the Government. It seems that Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg were not able to get the EU statement to deal with what we would like to see, which is a de-escalation from the Israelis. This is worrying in respect of what sort of agreement we will be able to get in future.

I am worried, on some level, regarding some of what is coming from some European states, certain commissioners and Ursula von der Leyen, that there is an element of a green light. When we are talking about international laws, we all know that Israel has a long history of violating them. We all know the issues we have called out in the Oireachtas regarding the annexation and stealing of Palestinian land. We are all aware of Gaza being an open prison. Let us be clear. We have heard much commentary about the fact that this is the greatest intelligence failure since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. For all that Israel has supposedly done to protect itself, it has failed to protect its people. It has created a set of circumstances not beneficial to anybody, not to the Palestinian people, nor to its own people, who have suffered acts of extreme barbarity that nobody could stand over.

What we would all like to see, and I think there would be absolute agreement on this point, would be some sort of international intervention from the perspective of returning to some roadmap regarding a two-state settlement. I do not see that happening now. I put it to the Minister of States that what we are looking at now is collective punishment. We are hearing Benjamin Netanyahu talking about reshaping the Middle East. I am not entirely sure what that means. If we just look at what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh, however, some 120,000 people were displaced like that and the world moves on very quickly. We are talking about 260,000 Palestinians having already been displaced. We are talking about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, and all the other elements of the UN saying they can barely deal with what they are dealing with now. Everybody is fearful of a ground invasion.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Micheál Martin, has spoken many times before about the fact that he wants to get some sort of engagement with others from the perspective of undertaking joint initiatives in respect of the recognition of Palestine and other things we would like to see and think need to happen. Otherwise, we will have a continuity of what we have seen happening to date, which has not suited anybody. Who are we engaging with in this regard? I imagine it is everybody. I assume, however, that we all believe some of the players who may have been on to pursue these types of endeavours would have included Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain. I would like to know if we are going to continue with this work.

If nobody else is willing to move, though, we then come back to the question posed by Deputy Carthy. Are we going to act? I ask this because what we have had to date has been an abject failure, particularly for the Palestinian people, but also for the Israelis. For all their security apparatus and apartheid walls, they have not been able to defend and protect themselves. We really need an intervention that benefits people, as opposed to, as I said, increased security and the possibility of a ground invasion. Everyone is talking about humanitarian corridors. Gaza is an area the size of County Louth that is completely surrounded. The bombs are going in and we think the tanks are also eventually going to go in, while the borders will remain sealed. I dread to think how that is going to work out.