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

The question the people in Gaza, who are desperate, are asking relates to what they are supposed to do. How often have Palestinians been condemned for armed or military responses?

One can say that they were right or that they were wrong but in this case, the people of Gaza have stated they would march with their hands in the air, unarmed, behind banners of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and that they would engage in peaceful protest to assert their rights under international law. This is not some right they made up or some aspiration they demanded but the right to return to their lands, which was set down under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194. They are asserting their right to go home. Israel's border does not trump their right to return because they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. It most certainly does not justify shooting down people on unarmed protests.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? Unless sanctions are imposed on Israel it will be indifferent. The decision by Mr. Trump to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem is a direct provocation. What are we going to do? I am making a very simple request and I would appreciate a response to it from the Minister. The representatives elected democratically in free and fair elections in Gaza, whom Israel and the Americans refuse to recognise, ask that we send an all-party delegation not to meet Hamas specifically, but to meet all groups, including the elected representatives of their parliament, in order to hear what they have to say and to look at that destruction so that we can point in the direction which will allow for peace, which is through engagement and discussion, not through the brutality displayed by Israel.

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