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

I move amendment No. 1:

To insert the following after "settlement activity and to regularly update Dáil Éireann": - publicly declare that the State of Israel is guilty of war crimes for its killing of innocent men, women and, most horrifically, 63 children in the Gaza Strip over recent weeks;

- acknowledge that:

- the recent escalation of violence was provoked by the attempt to ethnically cleanse 28 Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jerah area of Jerusalem and replace them with illegal Israeli settlers;

- these latest atrocities and war crimes perpetrated by the State of Israel are not isolated incidents but are part of an ongoing and systematic campaign by the Israeli State to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land and deny them basic rights under international and human rights law – a campaign that has been pursued relentlessly since the foundation of the State in 1948; and

- Israel, in its basic laws and practices, is an apartheid state, similar to the former apartheid state of South Africa, as defined by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (UNGA Resolution 3068 (1973)) and that Israel’s apartheid character has been confirmed by both the main Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem and the main United States based human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch;

- publicly assert that the Israeli apartheid system, through its ongoing ethnic cleansing, brutal state repression and murderous military violence – including four savage military assaults on Gaza in recent years, has no place among the international community of nations; and

- therefore to:

- expel the Israeli ambassador and all Israel diplomatic staff from Ireland;

- apply a comprehensive package of economic, political and cultural sanctions against the State of Israel, similar to that applied to apartheid South Africa; and

- maintain sanctions and promote them within the EU and internationally until the entire Israeli apartheid system is dismantled and all the Palestinian people enjoy national self-determination and full and equal rights, including the right to return of all Palestinian refugees expelled since 1948 and all their descendants, as required by international law (UN Resolution 194).

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