Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It is important to be clear that I have not made any proposal for a boycott of Israeli goods, and the Government does not support any such boycott. Successive Irish Governments have taken this view, and recognised also that such a proposal would have no chance of success.

The Foreign Affairs Council in May adopted conclusions on a range of critical and urgent issues which, in our view, increasingly threaten to make a peace agreement in the Middle East impossible to achieve. These issues centre on Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory which are progressively forcing Palestinians off the land in favour of illegal Israeli settlements. I made a detailed intervention in the Council debate. In addition, my officials had been heavily involved beforehand in the preparation of the draft conclusions. The conclusions adopted by the Council restated and in many respects advanced EU positions on these key issues and set out the remedial action which we wish to see, primarily of course from Israel.

I suggested at the Council that, in view of the urgency of these issues on the ground, Ministers should reconsider them in the autumn to see if the situation had improved or was continuing to worsen. I suggested that, if matters continued to worsen and our existing actions had not improved them, we would clearly need to consider stronger actions. The exclusion from the EU of settlement products and of individual settlers engaged in violence should in that case be considered as an option for stronger measures. I have previously stated that Ireland would support a ban on settlement products. I repeat that we do not support bans or boycotts on Israel and this is not in question. However, the products of illegal settlements, located in Occupied Palestinian Territory, constitute a separate and specific matter.

However, that is to look ahead and the Council as a whole will have to decide on any actions. At this point I emphasise that we have achieved a strong EU position which leaves High Representative Ashton and the EU well placed to press our concerns on these issues.

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