Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Gino Kenny.

I wish to congratulate Senator Black on bringing the Bill forward in the Seanad and thank all those outside the Oireachtas who campaigned for it. If passed, far from being a principled voice in the wilderness as the Tánaiste contended, it would represent a very important signal internationally as part of a global movement of solidarity against the oppression of the Palestinian people.

The arguments that have been marshalled against the Bill and the Government response to it are shameless and utterly cynical. The Tánaiste put forward various spurious legal arguments against the Bill. However, several newspapers today reported him as stating that the Israeli ambassador may leave Ireland if Ministers vote for the Bill, which belies the real story, namely, the pressure being put on the Government by the Israeli state. If the words of solidarity that Deputies Finian McGrath and Halligan previously uttered mean anything, they will be tripping over themselves to run to the Chamber and vote for the Bill tomorrow precisely to force the Israeli ambassador to leave Ireland. We should kick out representatives of the Israeli Government because of its crimes and oppression of the Palestinian people.

When discussing the settlements, we should be clear that they are a weapon of war against the Palestinian people and a perpetuation of what began with the Nakba and continued in the 1967 war. They involve the annexation and occupation of Palestinian land, creating facts on the ground and cutting across a contiguous Palestinian state through ethnic cleansing. They are being expanded at a rate of knots in east Jerusalem in order to undermine the possibility of a Palestinian capital. The project of expansion and settlements, encouraged by Donald Trump, is carried out with brutal violence and involves settlers and the Israeli army working hand in hand against the Palestinian people who live there. It is about creating a system of apartheid within the occupied territories with blatant discrimination: there are different roads, buses, rights and laws for Israelis and Palestinians. There are civilian laws for the Israeli settlers and military laws and rule for the Palestinian people.

Reference is often made to the international community when there is discussion of Palestine. In my opinion, there are two international communities. There is the international community of capitalist states and imperialist powers such as the United States and the European Union which, in spite of occasional crocodile tears, back up and fund the Israeli state and provide it with military assistance. There is also an international community of ordinary working-class people who are part of a global solidarity movement. It is they who have the capacity to assist the Palestinians as part of that movement. They can do so through a targeted boycott of any company or goods which benefit or result from the oppression of Palestinian people, including companies such as Caterpillar and Hewlett Packard, as well as the growing arms trade between Ireland and Israel. Workers should have nothing to do with any such trade.

I wish to conclude by making some general points from the point of view of the socialist party, Solidarity, and our sister party in Israel and Palestine, the Socialist Struggle Movement, about what can defeat the Israeli state's occupation and oppression when combined with this movement of global solidarity. We point to the mass uprising from below of the first intifada and to strikes, demonstrations and marches on border checkpoints, which show the power of mass movements. There was an important echo of those in recent months with the protest in Gaza against the siege, for example. A new upsurge of struggle from below, democratically controlled by committees of struggle, is needed to end the siege of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank, and the discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and to achieve the dismantling of the settlements.

The working class in the region has enormous power and is a vital ally. This week, there was a general strike in Tunisia and important strike movements in Iran, echoing the movements of the Arab revolution which began in 2011. There are other key potential allies within Israeli society. The Israeli Government represents the interests of the rich, rather than those of ordinary Israeli Jewish working-class people. Recent social movements such as the strikes against violence in December and the demonstrations against LGBTQ discrimination have seen unity between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.

We need an overthrow of the regimes in the region and the economic, political and social order they represent. We need economic and political power in the hands of working class people and out of the private ownership of the parasitic ruling classes across the region. On that basis, one could have the exercise of the equal right to national self-determination and an independent socialist Palestine alongside democratic socialist Israel.

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