Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Irish troops have an honourable record in their deployment in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL mission. For that reason, there is warm affection among the people of Lebanon, particularly southern Lebanon, for Irish troops and a recognition that their role, when they were deployed there between 1978 and 2001, was a genuinely benign one and a genuine peacekeeping mission. I have no doubt, in so far as Irish troops may be deployed to Lebanon again, that they will continue to play that honourable role and will be warmly received by the majority of people in Lebanon.

Of course, one must ask whether we should have to send troops to Lebanon. It is a serious question given the fact 47 Irish troops died in Lebanon between 1978 and 2001. There is potentially a real human cost for Irish citizens in this deployment. While one can only praise the bravery of those troops who have been stationed there in the past, or those who might go there on this occasion, for putting themselves in this situation in the interests of peacekeeping, we would all agree this is a serious business and one we would prefer not to have to do.

While the Minister can correct me if I am wrong, he also underlined the financial cost to the State of deploying troops, suggesting it would be approximately €2 million, or more. At one level, this is money well spent if it in any way contributes to peace and peacekeeping in a conflict ridden zone. On the other hand, however, it is of course money the people in this country would rather not have to spend, given the brutal cuts and austerity that are now being imposed on them, where every euro is precious for users of public services who are under severe pressure as a result of the economic crisis, the IMF deal and so on. While we may have to do this, it is a pity we have to do it, and we should be aware there may be a human cost, as there was in the past. There will certainly be a financial cost.

Given that, we have a responsibility to ask why we have to send these troops and what we are going to do to address the underlying reasons that peacekeeping is necessary in that area. I hope the Government will join me in acknowledging the reason we have to send troops to Lebanon is because of the continuous and relentless aggression by Israel in southern Lebanon against its people and the Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.

There is a constant, relentless history of invasion, incursion and brutal attacks by Israel against the people of Lebanon. There was invasion in 1978 and again in 1982, when Israel colluded with the right wing, fascist Lebanese Phalange, which massacred hundreds of people in the Palestinian refugee camps at Shabra and Chatila. In 1993, there was another heavy military attack by Israel into southern Lebanon and, in 1996, an Israeli bombing killed 100 Lebanese civilians in a United Nations military base at Qana, southern Lebanon. The Israeli withdrawal took place in 2000 but was followed some years later by another brutal Israeli invasion which saw 1,000 Lebanese people, mostly civilians, killed, devastation of the infrastructure, bridges, villages and roads, and the use of cluster munitions and other vile weapons against the civilian population of southern Lebanon, causing great devastation and destruction.

Will the Government agree that, in sending our troops into this danger zone, we must condemn that history of Israeli aggression and demand of Israel that it ceases such aggression in southern Lebanon and ends its occupation of the Shebaa farms, mentioned by the previous speaker? Will the Government also agree that the root of this conflict and the problems in southern Lebanon revolve around the issue of the Palestinian refugees? Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees have been living for decades in refugee camps in southern Lebanon, without a nation or rights of any description, because they were ethnically cleansed by Zionist terror gangs in 1948, who drove them from their homeland at gunpoint, using the most vile terrorist and ethnic cleansing tactics.

Is it not a fact, and will the Minister agree, that until the Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere are given the right to return to their homeland, from which they were displaced by Israel terror gangs in 1948, there will be no peace in Lebanon and we will continue to be forced to send our troops into the danger zone to deal with the consequences of that fact? Will the Minister state in the House that he agrees with United Nations Resolution 194, which insists that Palestinian refugees who were forced out in 1948 must be given the right to return and have equal citizenship rights in the land that was theirs and was stolen from them in 1948?

A resolution demanding their right to return, which has been reaffirmed some 110 times by the United Nations since 1948, would be the simplest way to resolve this conflict. We should ask the Israeli ambassador to Ireland why his country cannot grant that simple measure which would resolve all of this. Let the refugees go home, give them equal rights, and let them live as equal citizens in the land in which their families and ancestors have lived for thousands of years. We would ask no less anywhere else - that Arab, Jew, Christian, Muslim, persons of no religion and so on should have equal rights in that land. That is what we should ask for in order to resolve this brutal and horrendous conflict which goes on and on, continuing to claim lives and to spur on violence and conflict.

Will the Government call on the Israeli Government not to repeat its military aggression against the second international peace flotilla which will try to bring aid and support to refugees in Gaza later this year in an effort to break the inhuman and brutal siege of that region? Will the Government come out clearly in asking Israel to allow the flotilla to bring aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza? Given the gravity of a decision to send our troops into this situation, I hope we will take those types of actions and make those types of demands in order to deal with the underlying causes of the conflict in this area.

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