Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I too want to talk about the situation in Palestine and the ongoing immoral and illegal landgrab by Israeli settlers. Since 1967, Israel has established approximately 140 settlements on Palestinian land, accommodating more than 500,000 settlers, and groups of settlers have also built scores of other illegal outposts on Palestinian lands. I had the privilege to visit Palestine last year. The people are wonderful, welcoming and very resilient. When people think of settlers, that may conjure images of travellers on wagons roaming across the prairies, but the reality is very different. Armed Israelis, accompanied by the army, enter Palestinian homes and forcibly remove families. They steamroll in with heavy machinery and demolish Palestinian homes. They build armed compounds, claim the land as their own and settle, and that is the reality. I have seen these compounds at first-hand.

Yesterday, the Israeli Parliament paved the way for Jewish settlers to claim four settlements in the occupied West Bank. The EU, in fairness, has condemned this decision as counterproductive to de-escalation efforts and as a clear step back from a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but words are cheap. As I have said previously, condemnation without sanctions is futile. This needs to be raised at the European Council and affirmative action must be agreed.

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