Dáil debates

Wednesday, 7 July 2021

Ceisteanna - Questions

European Council

1:37 pm

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

Following the attempt at ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and the conflict and military brutality from Israel that provoked, the Government agreed to pass a motion that acknowledged illegal settlements were taking place on Israel's part, but it voted down an amendment I tabled that sought to characterise the situation as it is, not simply as illegal settlements but as an ongoing process of ethnic cleansing by an apartheid state, and consequently the state of Israel needs to be treated as the apartheid South African regime was with sanctions and boycott. In the past week, there have been more instances of the point I was making. Early on the morning of 29 June in the Silwan area, south of the Al-Asqa mosque, a town of 15,000 people, 40 Israeli military vehicles piled into the area in an attempt to demolish 96 homes of Jerusalemites. They used a bulldozer to knock down a butcher's shop. Israel has introduced a new law that essentially prevents those Palestinians from resisting the demolition of their homes. This week, there was also the spectacle of Naftali Bennett, the Israeli Prime Minister, trying to prevent Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship. Is this not proof that it is an apartheid state and a state involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as I said?

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