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

I thank Sinn Féin Members for sharing their time with us and raising this issue. I commend the Government for not opposing the motion. It is absolutely vital to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and statehood. It is a sign of the advancement of the Palestinian struggle that recognition is growing across the world.

I would not have become involved in politics were it not for this very issue. As an 18 year old, I travelled to Palestine and happened to walk into the middle of the first Palestinian intifada, although not deliberately - just as I arrived it was happening around me and I was shocked at what was happening. There has since been an extraordinary advance in the awareness of the terrible crime committed against the Palestinians and the need for them to find justice, freedom and self-determination.

One of the great ironies in this whole tragedy is that of the two greatest crimes committed against people in the past 100 years, one has been committed against the Palestinian people since 1948, while the other was committed against the Jewish people up to 1944 and 1945. The great irony is that a people who suffered so horribly in the Holocaust and who claim to represent that tradition are now responsible for the terrible oppression of the Palestinian people.

I would not vote against the motion, but it is always important to inject a critical note into any discussion such as this. I do not believe a two-state solution can work because it is predicated on the divisions between Arabs and Jews. It is predicated on the belief there could be something legitimate as a Jewish state, but I do not accept this. I do not believe there should be racially or religiously pure states. The partition of Palestine in 1948 was the source of the conflict.

The United Nations approved a partition and it legitimised the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians; it could not have happened without the partition of Palestine and as long as we fail to challenge the notion that there must be an ethnically or religiously pure state called "Israel" and something else which is an Arab state, there will never be peace in this region. It will always be at the expense of one or the other. The only concept we would accept anywhere else in the world is the idea that all human beings are equal under law, regardless of race, religion or creed. Accepting in any way that there should be a state giving priority to one religious group over another is a recipe for the oppression of one group over another. It will incite and encourage sectarianism, ethnic cleansing and violent conflict. We should know that from our own history.

It is a difficult issue. On the one hand, recognising the right of Palestine to statehood is vital in establishing the legitimacy of that people's struggle against the brutal oppression they face at the hands of Israel. In truth, when we consider what is left of the Palestinian territories, there is no viability in a two-state solution and there is no moral legitimacy in accepting the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. All Palestinians dispossessed in 1948 deserve the right to return and to be equal citizens, whether they are Jew, Arab, Christian, secular or atheist. That is regardless of whether that one state is called Israel or Palestine. That is the only viable solution.

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