Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

First and foremost, I send my support and solidarity to the Palestinian people on the anniversary of the Nakba yesterday. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Nakba. There have been 75 years of injustice, brutality and murder and of a programme of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. The Nakba is not an historic event; it is an ongoing atrocity that has seen over 9 million refugees, Palestinians in the occupied territories facing bombs and bullets every day and Palestinians in the Israeli state living under an apartheid regime. Just this year, 30 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli state as they enforce a regime that murders civilians, suppresses rights and democracy and enforces discrimination, segregation, desperation and poverty.

Gaza is an open-air prison of 2 million people and Israel is settling and annexing land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It maintains this regime through its western-supported military and police and the total suppression of democracy for every Palestinian, whether living in the Israeli state, under the Palestinian Authority or are scattered across the world as refugees.

The horror and brutality of this needs to be opposed. In 2018, I supported Senator Frances Black's occupied territories Bill. It was progressed by both Houses and supported by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, two of the parties currently in government, and has a massive amount of support throughout society. The Minister of State has asked us to kick the Bill down the road for another nine months. The Bill has been buried and left in limbo by the Government. It has ignored repeated calls for it to be brought back into the Dáil, hiding behind claims of conflict with EU and international law, despite numerous legal experts coming out to support its legality.

The reality is that the Government is too afraid to stand up to the United States of America and its efforts to preserve a military presence in the Middle East. It prioritises keeping the US and US companies in situover our moral duty as a people who have faced colonialism, genocide and partition to stand up for the rights and lives of Palestinian people.

Israel is a nuclear-armed state that has broken international law by annexing territory, occupying land, enforcing apartheid, targeting and killing civilians and ongoing bombing in Palestine. Due to our history, neutrality and support for Palestine, Ireland needs to be at the forefront of that opposition. The Bill before Members is a fraction of what Senator Black's Bill attempted to do, but it is no less important. Irish people want nothing to do with this apartheid state. They do not want their taxpayer money going towards a state that deliberately kills civilians and suppresses democracy.

I support the Bill and thank Deputy Brady for introducing it. I ask the Government to withdraw its amendment. I acknowledge and welcome the presence of Dr. Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, the Palestinian ambassador.

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