Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to debate the report on Ireland's Defence Forces' involvement with UN missions. Our peacekeeping forces have a great reputation internationally and we are supportive of their work. However, concern has been growing in recent years regarding how and where they are being deployed. We now often find that the diplomatic alliances and decisions of the Government work against the stated spirit of some of the missions and in some cases contribute to the danger in which our forces sometimes find themselves.

First, there is the vexed issue of the mission in the Golan Heights, which the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, is at pains to point out is an observer rather than a peacekeeping mission. The rationale behind the original UNDOF deployment to the Golan Heights in 1974 was to maintain the ceasefire between the Israeli and Syrian forces and to supervise the implementation of the disengagement agreement. Today, we are facilitating the ongoing illegal occupation of the Golan Heights by Israel. The Israeli Government recently called for an increase in settlements by 100,000 over the next five years. In September 2016, the Israelis began demolishing houses in the town of Majdal Shams near the Golan Heights for the first time since Israel occupied the Syrian territory following its capture in 1967. Syrian communities in the Golan Heights are also being squeezed by Israel’s expansion of Hermon National Park. Authorities have moved to appropriate 20,000 acres of land used by Majdal Shams and other communities for agriculture and housing.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia published a report which concluded that Israel is guilty of the international crime of apartheid against the Palestinians and that many of the report’s findings could equally apply to Israeli policy in the Golan Heights and be consistent with apartheid, as Israel has used Jewish settlement to stake a claim to the land and the population of the four Druze villages there live in conditions of relative deprivation. At the same time as we are observing this illegality in action, our forces are in increasing danger from extremist jihadi militias that are being armed by Israel.

The Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretzreported last month that at least seven, "Sunni rebel organizations in the Syrian Golan are now getting arms and ammunition from Israel, along with money to buy additional armaments". We are overseeing the establishment of another illegal apartheid regime by the Israelis, while they arm anti-Assad forces and ensure that the war in Syria is prolonged for as long as possible.

There are planned consecutive deployments this year of two Naval Service ships as part of Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean. Last year, a House of Lords inquiry found that Operation Sophia's policy of destroying smugglers' boats has meant that refugees go to sea in unseaworthy vessels, leading to more deaths. On top of this, as part of Operation Sophia the so-called Libyan coast guard is being trained to intercept refugees at sea and bring them back to Libya. We know from multiple reports from aid agencies that these are nothing short of pirates and have been responsible for increasing the number of refugees drowning at sea. The refugees who are intercepted are brought back to the place of violence and human rights violations that they fled, where they face arbitrary detention, torture and rape, often to extract a ransom from them when they are detained in detention centres run by the Government. Last year, Amnesty International called out the EU for its complicity in the evolving Libyan slave trade, where people are being sold at public auctions. That we would take part in and facilitate this criminal enterprise through our role in Operation Sophia is to undermine the reputation of our peacekeeping forces. Nothing but human suffering will come of this mission.

If Ireland really cared for the refugees we would stop allowing Shannon to be used as a US military air base from which untold destruction emanates. This is 2018 and after the invasion of Afghanistan, which was followed by the invasion of Iraq 15 years ago last week, it beggars belief that we still see fit to allow any military nation to use an airport in Ireland to cause destruction in another country. We are throwing out a Russian diplomat yet we are still prepared to allow the US military use one of our airports for this. It is too bad.

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