Mr. Colm O'Gorman:

The Chairman might assist me. I have tried to make a note of the significant number of questions that have been asked and I want to try to deal with them all. If there is any we do not get to, perhaps the Chairman will remind us, particularly the questions he raised.

A general point I wish to make is that we of course recognise the extraordinary work many people have been doing for a very long time on this issue. One of the things we think is significant about the publication of this report is that it now establishes a consensus across the international human rights movement that the crime of apartheid is being committed by Israel. That is an important moment. There is now a clear consensus on that fact and we are calling on others to step up, to name that wrong, to acknowledge that crime, and to take the steps that flow from that. We recognise the work of B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch and other organisations in that regard. We were very conscious of that fact when coming before this committee. This is an issue on which this committee has been very engaged. We welcome, appreciate and value the calls made in the committee's recent report that reflect many of the steps we are taking which are critical to dismantling the system of apartheid this report reveals.

However, we urge the committee to go one step forward and recognise that all the violations that members have identified and called for an end to, constitute a system of domination and control over Palestinians, who fall under the control of Israel, and that that amounts to the crime of apartheid. We ask the committee to look at the evidence collected in its own work and the sum of all the recommendations the committee made. It made those recommendations on the basis that there are breaches of international law being committed by Israel. Members must realise that there is a system at play here. Please look at the very solid and extensive evidence that has been presented by us and so many others for so long. We are talking about a system of oppression and control. Even if the members are not inclined to listen to that evidence, I ask that they listen to what Israel says. Israel talks about maintaining a system of control in order to achieve very particular outcomes on its own part. Israel is very clear about this.

That leads to me addressing some of the questions from Deputy Boyd Barrett. He might not find these answers particularly useful, but I will explain why they might not be particularly useful. We are a human rights organisation. We operate within the context of the framework of international human rights law, and our analysis is within that framework. I say that to explain an answer to some of the Deputy's specific points. He was talking about Israel as an apartheid state. That is one of the questions we have been asked since we issued this report. Are we saying that Israel is an apartheid state? We are not, and there is a reason for that. Apartheid is a grave violation of international law, as everybody knows, where one racial group exercises oppression and domination over another racial group. It is a crime against humanity committed by individuals who perpetrate serious violations in order to maintain such oppression and domination. Thus, under international law, there is no such thing as an "apartheid state" and that is why we have not used that phrase or made that particular finding in that regard.

The Deputy asked questions about political solutions to this conflict and whether two-state solutions and other solutions might deliver. We are asking the international community to step up and go beyond the question of political frameworks that provide solutions and instead start to respond to the very grave crimes and grave human rights violations that are being perpetrated in the midst of this conflict.

As a human rights organisation, we do not comment on political questions such as the legitimacy of any particular state or ideology. We do not take a position on Israel as a Jewish state or on the rights of Palestinians to an independent state, since we do not take a position on the measures taken by people to exercise their right to self-determination. We simply cannot do that as an international human rights organisation. We recognise that both the Jewish and the Palestinian people claim the right to self-determination, but in the context of any process that seeks to arrive at a political solution to this conflict, there needs to be recognition that the promise of a political solution or the dancing with a notion of it, as undertaken by Israel, has been used as cover to build and maintain a system of oppression and control. We support all efforts to bring an end to that conflict.

Of course we, as individual human beings and as an organisation, support every possible effort that might be brought to bear to provide a solution to this conflict. It is now many decades since the foundation of the state of Israel and the beginning of the development of this system of oppression and control. The international community has to recognise that the role it has played so far has granted Israel absolute impunity to continue to commit these grave crimes under international law. We are now at a point where Israel will suggest that stating that fact is anti-Israeli, as if there is something inherent to Israel as a state that demands or requires that it be permitted to perpetrate these violations. I cannot imagine anything being more anti-Israeli or against the integrity of any state than the political leaders of that state asserting that it is central to its character that it be allowed to breach international law and violate the human rights and dignity of millions of people, including citizens of the state, to whom it denies equal rights and nationality.

I will move on to some of the other questions. I am sure Mr. Higazi will want to speak too. The Deputy asked about comments from one member of Amnesty International in Israel. The report was produced by Amnesty International's international secretariat. Our secretary general flew from London to launch the report in east Jerusalem. Amnesty Israel was not involved in producing any research for the report because that role is reserved for the international secretariat. Of course individual people, including, perhaps, one individual in Amnesty Israel, might have a different analysis based on elements of the report, from its first reading. The report is the outcome of four years of exhaustive research and legal analysis that have been carried out by Amnesty International's international secretariat. It chimes with and accords fully with findings made by other leading international rights organisations. It accords with a view, as articulated by Deputy Brady earlier, of a former attorney general of Israel. Is he anti-Israeli? It chimes with comments and statements made over many years by senior political leaders from Israel. For over a decade, former Jewish political leaders of Israel have talked about how Israel has been building a system of apartheid.

Before I hand over to Mr. Higazi to see if he would like to add anything and before I am reminded if there are questions that we have not answered, I return again to one of the key requests we have for this committee. That request is for the committee to build upon the important work it has done so far and to apply the lens that we have applied. When one looks at a range of human rights violations, one is looking at a system designed to produce a particular outcome. It is a system of domination and control that is intended to favour one racial group over another and to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians wherever Israel controls their lives. In doing so, it perpetrates grave human rights violations. By any standard, including a simple reading of the apartheid convention, that is apartheid. Stating that and calling for an end to that system of apartheid is a critical next step.