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

I made most of the points I want to make about Brexit in the earlier engagement, but I will summarise briefly. It is very welcome and long overdue that Prime Minister Theresa May has moved away from trying to engage or have reason to prevail with the headbangers on the Tory right like Mr. Boris Johnson, MP; Mr. Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP, and the European Research Group, ERG. They are driven by their own personal ambitions, a really rotten nostalgia for Britain's imperial greatness as they imagine it, little Englandism and xenophobia. As they were never likely to listen to reason, it is welcome that Mrs. May has started to engage with Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, MP, notwithstanding the tendency of people both here and in Britain to malign him for his left-wing views. This engagement actually offers the possibility of a deal being done because Mr. Corbyn does not want a race-to-the-bottom Brexit of the sort the Tory right wants. It is noteworthy that the issues he is raising in his engagement with Mrs. May are ones that really matter to British people and people across Europe, issues such as workers' rights, health and safety standards and so on. He is saying clearly that he wants a deal that would not undermine these standards. Left-wing politics of Mr. Corbyn's kind are precisely about raising standards in areas such as workers' rights and environmental ambitions, opposing militarism and promoting an egalitarian and progressive agenda. They are quite alien to Mrs. May and will make her reluctant to do a deal with Mr. Corbyn, but there is a glimmer of hope. The best hope, however, lies in having a general election in Britain to remove the Tories and open the way for a left-wing Government with politics of the kind Mr. Corbyn is articulating.

It is welcome that the clear message from here to the European Union is that in no circumstances can a hard border in Ireland be considered for any reason and it seems to be having an impact.

I hope we can trust our European counterparts in the event of a no-deal Brexit, which we hope will not come to pass, and that they will not intend to put pressure on us to impose border infrastructure between the North and South, something that should be hotly resisted if there is any attempt to do it. It would seem that the message at least from here is clear in that regard.

I wish to move on to some other issues, which the Taoiseach will probably not have much time to discuss at the European Council but it would be remiss not to mention given the day that is in it, that is, the Israeli general election. I made the point to the Taoiseach earlier that it is a very positive thing for Angela Merkel to come here and say that the bitter experience of the Berlin Wall and the division of East Germany, which ended with the wall being pulled down in 1989, led her to somewhat empathise with our concerns and opposition to a hard border North and South. That is a positive development, but Europe is failing to take the same attitude when it comes to the walls and borders brutally imposed by Israel, and in particular by the Netanyahu Government on the Palestinian people. We are seeing the rottenness of Israeli politics manifest in a particularly repugnant way in recent weeks and months. The talk by Mr. Netanyahu of annexing further illegal settlements on Palestinian territory follows the acceptance by the United States of the annexation of the Golan Heights. All of those things completely fly in the face of international law, yet the European Union does nothing about it.

An Israeli lawyer came into my clinic in the past week who represents Palestinian children who are locked up. He explained in detail how an apartheid legal system is in operation. I do not know why the Taoiseach is smirking. Palestinian children, almost always, are arrested in and around areas of illegal Israeli settlements. They are arrested in the middle of the night, tied with plastic ties, blindfolded and their parents are not allowed to go with them. They are dragged into cells and interrogated under military law. In the same towns and areas, Israelis who might be accused of the same crimes are brought to civil courts where none of that sort of mistreatment and abuse of children is allowed. It is illegal to do that to an Israeli child, but it is done every single day to Palestinian children because a different set of laws applies to Palestinian children than to Israeli children even though they live in the same place. That is the definition of apartheid. What is being done is appalling. Thousands of Palestinian children are arrested every year and at any point, hundreds are in prison. The Israeli lawyer explained that those children are marked forever by that experience. They are damaged and traumatised forever but nothing is being done about it.

Similarly, adult prisoners commenced a hunger strike on Sunday. Some 30 Palestinian prisoners initially refused food and water and it is going to escalate to 1,500 because conditions in Israeli prisons, in particular Ramon Prison in the Negev, are deteriorating. Conditions are so appalling and obnoxious that the Palestinians simply cannot take it anymore. According to human rights groups, 1,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons are very seriously ill and are not getting the medical treatment they need. Hundreds more have chronic illnesses and in some cases they are life-threatening illnesses. That is going on under the nose of the international community and nothing is done.

Israel sticks two fingers up to Europe when it comes to Europe putting money into projects in Gaza and in the West Bank which the Israelis just go and blow up. They blow up projects that are funded with European money and Europe does nothing. While I welcome the statement the Tánaiste issued yesterday, it is not good enough. Countries like Germany, and in particular Merkel, have a hands-off attitude to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and do not want to take any action. We continue to give preferred trading status to Israel under the Euromed association agreement. The agreement contains human rights clauses which mean it should be suspended, but we do nothing about it. When will there be sanctions over the systematic, ongoing, unacceptable human rights abuses, including most horribly the systematic abuse of children's rights who are being treated in the most brutal fashion? In the case of Ahed Timimi, a family relative of hers was shot through the skull and permanently damaged by an Israeli soldier. Following her protest at what happened, she ended up in prison and was treated in the same way that hundreds of other young children are being treated by the Israelis. I appeal to the Taoiseach to do something about that and to demand that, finally, Europe shows a bit of moral backbone and imposes some real sanctions on Israel for its systematic ongoing brutal suppression of human and civil rights in Palestine.

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