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

It is. I am sharing time with Deputy Gino Kenny.

I thank Sinn Féin for introducing this Bill, which we are happy to support. Israel is not only guilty of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and settler colonialism on the historical land of Palestine, but it is now guilty of that at Dublin Airport as well. I received an email on 8 May from a young Palestinian woman who was studying in UCD and was taking a flight on a newly established route - I was not aware of it - with EL AL, an Israeli airline, from Dublin to Tel Aviv. Since it is relevant to understanding the nature of the Zionist state, people should know that, if you are from Jerusalem and you are Palestinian, you are issued with an Israeli travel document that refuses to acknowledge your Palestinian identity.

It identifies you as Jordanian. That is important because the fundamental fact about the Zionist state is that it does not acknowledge the existence of Palestinians. This is what happened to a young woman when boarding a flight. I will just read some of the email.

First, at the El Al check-in counter in Dublin Airport, I was denied by the airline's Israeli security from carrying any kind of luggage to the plane including my personal bag which included my laptop and my work phone. I was the only one discriminated against in the check-in queue, investigated with, and asked to go to the departure gate 20 minutes earlier than everyone else for a special security check.

At the departure gate, I was the only one picked from tens of passengers queueing; taken to a separate room where I was searched and harassed by the mentioned Airline's Israeli security. After the Israeli security have conducted a full-body security check on me [This is a young woman] they commanded me to physically remove my clothes; threatened me - despite me saying no - that if I don’t take off my trousers, they will deny me boarding on the flight. I had a breakdown in the airport and that did not stop them from harassing me; I was dazzled that this has happened on Irish grounds.

She goes on. That is a disgrace but it is absolutely emblematic of what the Israeli state is all about. On the day after the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, we need to understand that the 750,000 illegal settlers on land that is designated as Palestinian land under international law, the ongoing campaign to ethnically cleanse people like this young woman and her family from East Jerusalem, the criminal siege of Gaza, which is a war crime and crime against humanity in the same way as the illegal settlements, the ethnic cleansing and the apartheid policies practised in Israel, in the occupied territories, in Gaza and now in Dublin, are absolutely unacceptable.

The question is: what are we going to do about it? This goes on and on. It has gone on since the foundation of the State of Israel. It is not some aberration. That is something that was made absolutely clear by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. Even when they agreed to the partition plan, a disastrous plan that led directly to the Nakba, in well-recorded personal conversations they made clear that they had no intention of sticking to the partition plan and that they were out to seize all of the land. When asked about the Nakba, the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish described it as "an extended present that promises to continue into the future"; in other words, he said the Nakba is ongoing. The plan is to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine of Palestinians, to deny their existence, to treat them as subhuman, to steal their land and to drive them out of existence. That is the nature of the Israeli regime and the Zionist project. I really wonder when we are going to wake up to that fact. Millions of Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have been rotting in refugee camps for generations even though they have a right under international law to return to the lands from which they were expelled. Does anybody seriously believe Israel is even remotely interested in vindicating that right, a right under international law? At this stage, does anybody seriously believe that Israel's signing of the Oslo peace accords was anything other than a smokescreen to continue the project of ethnic cleansing? It was never serious about a two-state solution.

We not only need to pass this Bill, but we also need to support full boycott of, divestment from and sanctions on the entire apartheid regime and State of Israel because it is a state built on ethnic cleansing and on denying Palestinians their most basic rights, that is, the right to be treated as human beings, the right to self-determination, the right of return, the right for their land not to be stolen from them and the right not to be collectively punished with the decade-long siege of Gaza. It is shocking, yet the Government says that we have to delay this. When are the sanctions going to come? We were eventually forced to introduce sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Are we going to twiddle our thumbs and allow all this to happen, even the affront of what is happening in our airport? How could this happen? It is absolutely shocking. I ask the Minister of State to withdraw the Government's amendment and allow the Bill pass. I would go further but I am happy to support this Bill. The apartheid, the ethnic cleansing and the settler colonialism has to be reckoned for what it is. It is an absolute affront to any idea of equality, human rights or human decency. The world has to stand up against this horror and finally take action to vindicate the rights of Palestinians.

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