Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Social Democrats is supporting this motion. We are proud to co-sign it, as presented by Sinn Féin and a number of different charities and NGOs working in the field.

I imagine there is no silence as deafening as that invoked by a ceasefire. What sound does a person hear when bombs stop being dropped, when screams are not heard for the first time in weeks and when fighter jets are not screeching overhead, threatening the lives of people and children in one of the most densely-populated areas on earth? It was interesting to look at the newspapers today. For the first time in over two weeks, there was no mention on the front pages of the conflict in Gaza that claimed so many lives only last week. During the horrors of the latest round of violence to be inflicted on the Palestinian people, the Irish people stood in shocked disbelief that one group of people could treat another with such barbarism and inhumanity. We were horrified by the death toll. As of today, the number of people killed in Gaza by precision missile strikes stands at 248, 66 of whom were children. Almost 2,000 people were wounded in one of the most densely-populated places on the planet. One cannot help but imagine the carnage that rained down on the people of Gaza from the sky in the form of million-pound missiles.

Images of the past two weeks will live long in all of our memories. We saw buildings being reduced to rubble from which bodies were pulled. We tried to make sense of the death toll and the number of children being killed, and entire families being clearly targeted. In some instances, three and four generations of Palestinian families were quite clearly lined up for extermination by the Israeli Defence Force, which was not only targeting the fighters but also, in many cases, children and their parents. We tried to make sense of how a country that presents itself as a modern democracy could destroy a building that contains a news outlet and journalists tasked with reporting on the conflict. We tried to make sense of how Israel could continue to expel families from their homes and meet the protest of those families and their communities with rubber bullets. We tried to make sense of how a modern democracy could storm a place of worship during the holiest period of the year for the people who were praying there and not see it as anything other than what it was, a provocation. We saw batons, rubber bullets, skunk water and precision missiles being used in response to the Palestinians having the audacity to oppose forced expulsions and for confronting the storming of their holiest sites. As already stated, 248 were killed, including 66 children. A population of over 2 million was terrorised. Today, the attention of the world has seemingly moved on.

Another authoritarian regime attacked the free press this week. Clearly, the world can only see one despot at a time. The tyrant in Belarus of whom I speak sent an F-16 fighter jet effectively to force a Ryanair plane to perform a rendition flight so that a young journalist could be kidnapped in an egregious act of state piracy over the skies of Belarus. The response from the EU Council yesterday was swift, prompt and just. However, one could not help but note the contrast that bordered on hypocrisy, given the meekness of the international response to the savagery of the Israeli Government towards the people of Gaza over the last number of weeks, months, years and decades. President Lukashenko of Belarus had the plane hijacked and the journalist kidnapped in a grotesque act that has met with sanctions and international boycotts of Belarusian airspace and a unified condemnation by world leaders. The fighter jets of Benjamin Netanyahu bombed the bureaus of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press just last week. The only collective response on which the world could agree was a meek call for a calming of hostilities on both sides. For this crime, there will be no sanctions, boycotts or divestments that target the pockets of the perpetrators. The world seems to have moved on very quickly. It has moved on from the scenes of destruction and death that we saw being inflicted upon the people and children of Gaza just last week.

Today, though, through our Parliament, the Irish people get to make a stand. We can give words and meaning to what our eyes can see clearly. It will be significant that the Irish Parliament, through its representatives, recognises that what Israel is doing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank represents a de factounlawful annexation of these territories. It is important that we do this now and that we do not equivocate as we do so. We must be unified in our message that Israeli actions will no longer go unchallenged - if not by the international community, then certainly be by the people of Ireland who remain horrified by the barbarism that we witnessed. While the world seems to have turned its attention elsewhere, the people of Gaza remain under effective siege. The bulldozers are still moving into East Jerusalem, where opposition to their presence is crushed, and families in Sheikh Jarrah are still being forced from their homes.

We, as a truly modern and vibrant democracy, in recognising that an annexation has been carried out by the State of Israel on the Palestinian territories, are undertaking an important act that will reverberate around the world and will hopefully have some meaning for the people who are being displaced from their land. I hope that we continue to speak truth to power in this manner and go further in our condemnation of the Israeli state and its Government for their actions in this regard.

Last week, I spoke in this Chamber of how diplomacy fails when children are being blown up in their beds. It should never be forgotten that all of our hopes are for a peaceful two-State solution to this decades-long crisis. However, it is naive in the extreme to think that the right-wing hawks in the Israeli Government are interested in such an endeavour when they continue their occupation of, and illegal expansion into, Palestinian territory, and continue to inflict persecution and a form of apartheid on the Palestinian peoples in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Once again, I call on the Government and the State to avoid being temperate in their language or condemnation. I call for them to speak truth in whatever form it comes. I welcome the fact that across the Chamber we will agree that a form of annexation is taking place. That is important.

I gave great consideration to the Government's amendment but I will not be supporting it on the grounds that it equates to a form of "both sidesism". Of course, we condemn Hamas for firing rockets into Israeli territory and acknowledge that 12 Israelis have died in this conflict. We condemn that in all of its forms. However, not to see the disproportionality in the response from the Israeli Government would be to be meek, to create a false equivalence and to give the false impression that both sides are equal in this endeavour, when one has access Iron Dome military defences and a billion-dollar armoury that is funded by the US among others and the other is a population that is living in one of the poorest and most densely-populated parts of the world and is being bombed and targeted.

Once again, I wish to refer to what is happening in Gaza as a form of state-sponsored terrorism. Two weeks ago, Human Rights Watch referred to the situation unfolding in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a form of apartheid. We must remember that and acknowledge it. We must be deliberate in our responses to it.

I welcome the position the Minister is adopting today. It is brave and it is a stance that will reverberate around the world. However, the Government must go further. Now is the time to enact the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018. We simply cannot accept that an annexation is happening but state that business will continue as usual. It cannot. We cannot trade in an area of the world in which we now recognise that an annexation is taking place. It has been a point well made, but we cannot call for a two-state solution and continue to fail to recognise Palestine as a state in its own right. I will go further than that and call for an Irish ambassador to be placed in Ramallah. It would be a most significant and important step to take.

Last week, I took the decision to co-sponsor a motion that was brought by People Before Profit calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. It was not a decision that I took lightly, but it is one that I stand over. I wish to speak on this issue in the time remaining. I believe that Israel is an apartheid state that is engaging in a brutal assault on Gaza, the most densely-populated internment camp in the world. I reiterate that 248 people were killed in the recent bombardment, many of whom were children. Of the 66 children who died, 11 were participating in a Norwegian Refugee Council programme that provides support to children in Gaza to help them deal with trauma. These innocents, who were already emotionally and physically scarred from previous violence, died under Israeli missiles. Many died under burning rubble, with their entire extended families. The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, stated: "If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza." Those are strong words, but where was the action against Israel for inflicting this hell on those children?

The response of the international community to the carnage in Gaza has been shameful and craven. The UN Security Council could not even agree to release a statement calling for a ceasefire. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, has stated that the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador would not be helpful. I strongly argue that words or platitudes would not be helpful.

Prior to the latest assault, Israel had been engaged in the forced eviction of Palestinian as it continued to expand its illegal settlements. There comes a time when inaction in the face of relentless human rights abuses and war crimes becomes complicity.

Most importantly, this will send the message to the people of Gaza that we support them and are with them.

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