Mr. Conor O'Neill:

It is 700 km long. The Senator will know it is covered in graffiti head to toe and at a certain point it says in giant letters “If you have seen this, you are responsible”. I remember those words. They have just stuck because the message Palestinians are trying to get across there is that you cannot just see that and then forget. Irish people open their phones first thing in the morning or look at the “Six One” news and see the images and footage of children who are starving for the lack of food that is left to rot in trucks and we have this sense that we are responsible. People say the international community needs to do something about it – we are the international community. This legislation is something that is modest but impactful, lawful and aligned with human rights that we can do in a practical sense. Right across the West Bank, and I can say this on behalf of the aid agency I work for, we are seeing an explosion in almost every single metric: more Palestinian families kicked off their land; more land seized; more illegal settlements approved or constructed; and the system of entrenchment that has been built there that UN experts have described as one of apartheid, namely, a formalised two-tier system of discrimination with separate roads, being tried in separate courts, voting in separate elections and children unable to walk down the same road to go to school. That level of formalised discrimination is so obviously wrong you do not need a law degree or anything like it to know it. You just need to see it and then refuse to forget about it.