Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we are clear about what we are confronting this evening. The people of Palestine live under an oppressive and brutal apartheid regime. It is a cruel system enforced and intensified by Israel's new government. The systematic violation of human rights and international law sees Palestinians killed, jailed and tortured, Palestinian homes demolished, families driven from their villages, Palestinian schools bulldozed into the dust and Palestinian health clinics destroyed. Beleaguered, besieged and impoverished, Palestinians struggle for their very survival against an onslaught that is relentless.

Annexation and the illegal settling of Palestinian lands is at the very centre of this travesty. The annexation of Palestinian land is part of a strategy to make it impossible for Palestinians to maintain a viable homeland. This must be called out now. Seventy-five years ago, the Nakba saw 700,000 Palestinians expelled from their homeland. A further 300,000 men, women and children were forced out when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Israel revoked the residency rights of 250,000 Palestinians in those occupied territories between 1967 and 1994 and they have not been allowed the right of return.

The annexation and violent illegal settling of their lands that Palestinians face today is not new. It is a brutal continuation of an injustice they have endured for decades. It is this outrage and the trampling of human rights that Israel claims as defence. Let us be clear. Annexation and illegal settling of other people's land is not defensive action. Let us call it out for what it really is. Annexation and illegal settlement is aggression, attack and conquest. Annexation is illegal and these settlements are racist. Annexation and illegal settling is apartheid.

Through the legislation before us we are challenging the oppression of the Palestinian people. Remember, in the dark days when South Africa was under apartheid, Ireland was a champion of international resistance against this wicked regime. Just as Ireland powerfully stood for justice and freedom in South Africa we must now stand for justice, freedom and peace in Palestine. The Bill should not be contentious. It provides the Dáil with an opportunity to come together in the name of human rights and the rule of international law. We can send a unified message that Ireland will never ever accept the apartheid forced on the Palestinian people.

To be true to this principle, there can be no double standards. Remember, two years ago the Dáil unanimously recognised Israel's occupation as a war crime. It is unconscionable that the Government continues to invest in companies that operate in illegal settlements. It should not be happening. Frankly speaking, it is a disgrace. The issue is clear cut. You cannot say we stand for the rights of the Palestinian people while continuing to profit from their oppression and misery. You cannot condemn and deplore Israel's brutality while making money from it. The only return we get on these shameful investments is the violation of human rights and the shredding, repeatedly, of international law. It is back to persecution. It is back to the degradation and collective punishment of an entire people. It is back to apartheid.

These shameful investments fly in the face, I believe, of the values of the Irish people because there is no national appetite for Ireland to support Israeli war crimes. The State must divest from these investments without delay and the Government should really go further. We should see the progression and enactment of the occupied territories Bill, which would ban trading with any illegal settlement. The Government should also take a stand for Palestinian freedom and dignity and for Palestinian nationhood by finally recognising the state of Palestine, as unanimously supported by the Dáil seven years ago. Our history is one of colonisation, oppression, displacement and dispossession. It is also a history of a people's struggle for independence and freedom, a story of a people determined to go on, to endure, to overcome and to take its rightful place among the nations of the world.

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It is also latterly a story of peace and the ability to end what seemed at points an intractable and impossible conflict. To remain faithful to our national experience, we must always stand on the side of those who are persecuted, those whose rights are denied and those who are colonised. We must stand with Palestine. We must stand for freedom, for peace, for a resolution of conflict, for the upholding of international law and for an end to a wicked apartheid regime.

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