Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister to forgive me if I am focused in my two and a half minutes. There is a lot I would like to say about the occupied territories but I will confine myself to the six human rights organisations that have been designated as terrorist organisations. From my calculations it has been six weeks since then and other than expressing concern we have done little else. While I have never doubted the Minister's bona fides, we have done little else in six weeks. The latest step has been the military commander clarifying to the organisations that if they wish to appeal then they must stop immediately functioning as human rights organisations. It is time that we did something more than concern.

Of course, this did not happen overnight. It has happened because the Israeli Government got away with a succession of acts that they never should have been allowed to get away with. If we look at the culmination of the year in relation to the proceedings before the International Criminal Court, there was a number of different issues during that year. We will start with February 2021 and where a pretrial chamber ruled on the jurisdiction, which obviously did not please the Israeli Government. I make a distinction always between the Israeli Government and the Jewish people. Then, in October 2021 we learned that the new prosecutor and his office confirmed that it was taking up the fight again and the investigation would be mobilised. Then we got the designation and this extra step from the military commander. Prior to that, phones were infiltrated and a surveillance operation was mounted.

We can go back. We could take any number of years but in the interest of brevity I will just mention that in 2016 the Israeli Parliament adopted the NGO disclosure law to force Israeli NGOs to disclose funding sources, which had a chilling effect on donations. In 2017 Israel enacted an amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law barring those human rights workers who advocate for Palestinians from entering. In 2018 the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs called on the EU to cease donating to or funding human rights organisations. I could go on but I will not because my time is limited.

There is any amount of concern and condemnation expressed by different groups but I would like to zone in on the Israeli organisations. The Israeli newspaper Haaretzhas called the decision to designate the six organisations "a stain upon Israel". It said: "The outlawing of human rights groups and persecution of humanitarian activists are quintessential characteristics of military regimes, in which democracy in its deepest sense is a dead letter." A joint statement against the designation has been issued by 21 human rights groups calling the designation "a draconian measure".

I am over my time now. As I am always giving out about speaking time I will stop on time. I put it to the Minister that it is time to take action as opposed to continuing to express concern.

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