Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for his presentation so far. I want to bring up that we keep talking about international law and the rules of war. This throws me. We spent 40 years with a civil war in the North of our country, where international rules mean nothing. Terrorists were willing to kill their own people, which is exactly what Hamas is willing to do. Hamas uses human shields all of the time. This is not some lovely game with a referee in the middle who says "That is not on" or "That is on". This is a brutal war where the terrorists involved are prepared to kill all around them - Israelis, Palestinians or anyone else who gets in their way. They are totally and utterly uncaring with respect to the impact their actions can have on the general stability of the Middle East.

We have to put things in context. We have to step back from it a little and see exactly what is going on. The Tánaiste made the point a short time ago that if 1,500 of your people are brutally murdered on a Saturday, are you to sit and do nothing? Do not get me wrong. I do not for one moment condone the cutting off of water, food and fuel in Gaza. I do not support the blanket bombing of Gaza. I recently relayed to the Israelis that, in my view, the attempt to wipe out Hamas has turned the Israeli Defense Forces into a recruiting sergeant for Hamas. If they were to wipe out every single member of Hamas today, a new organisation would rise from the ashes tomorrow and they would face the same thing.

In our own country, we learned that the only way to end terrorism was to talk - to sit down and find a solution. Surely we in Ireland, who have been through this, who know what it takes to make people who hate one another, people who are willing to throw their own people under the bus, to talk to each other, are the people who should be able to talk to both sides here.

My problem is the Tánaiste spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, who is the political leader of the Palestinian people, but he is not Hamas. How do we talk to terrorists who care for nothing? I, like everybody else, see the images of little children lying in hospital with bullet wounds and all sorts of things. Let us not for one moment turn around and say this is all Israel's fault. Hamas brought this on its own people. I am not saying the response from Israel is right. I am saying Hamas brought this on its own people. You can talk about open prisons and about anything you want, but at the end of the day, somebody somewhere sat in a room and planned what happened a couple of weeks ago. That is exactly what happened. They planned it and they meant it to happen. We have to be realistic about it. We must try to get moderation on both sides. There is nothing else we can do. My concern is that we have been too quick to demonise Hamas and not recognise that it is a two-sided story. It is a story that will not be resolved without a two-state solution.

I will move on to our own citizens in Gaza and Palestine.