Mr. Garry Walsh:

I thank the Chairman and committee for inviting Mr. Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, to discuss the current humanitarian and human rights crisis in the Gaza Strip. Trócaire has been working in the occupied Palestinian territory in Israel for more than ten years. We work with local Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations, and have worked very closely with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which Mr. Sourani established in the early 1990s.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is shocking and the ongoing military occupation of the West Bank, which has been in place for nearly half a century, is one of the great human rights issues of our time. Trócaire has responded to the deteriorating human rights situation, and that is why we are working with organisations like the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Nowhere are violations of human rights more acute than in the Gaza Strip, which has suffered eight years of an economic blockade and has experienced three different miliary conflicts since 2009. Mr. Sourani will be able to speak about that, as well as the impact of the blockade and the cycles of violence on people living in the Gaza Strip. I am delighted to be able to introduce Mr. Sourani today. He is an eminent and established human rights lawyer and has been defending human rights in the Gaza Strip since the 1970s. He has been imprisoned by the Israeli authorities for his brave work and was twice the Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. He is also a recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and in 2013 was awarded the Right Livelihood award, also known as the alternative Nobel Peace Prize.