Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This year is the 75th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe when the Palestinian people lost their homelands and society and 700,000 people, the majority of Palestinians, were permanently displaced, and the world looked the other way. The Tánaiste spoke about the UNRWA and the UN refugee camps. He knows there are 3 million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. I saw many of them myself when I visited the camps in Lebanon where refugees were staying with other refugees as a result of the latest wave of Israeli oppression. The Tánaiste knows there are 1.7 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, out of a population of 2.1 million. He knows there are 880,000 refugees, impoverished people, in the West Bank, and the world looked the other way. He knows about the 1967 borders and how the Palestinian people were packed into camps in the West Bank and Gaza and separated from each other. There are 5 million people living under oppression and the military apartheid regime, and the world looked the other way. The Tánaiste knows about the UN resolutions passed again and again, and the world looked the other way. He knows from reports by Amnesty International, B'Tselem reports and Human Rights Watch that Israel is an apartheid state, and the world looks the other way.

The Tánaiste spoke about a two-state solution. He knows what Israel has done to the two-state solution. It has destroyed it to the point that the Palestinian people have lost all confidence in it. The world has looked the other way again and again. The challenge for the Tánaiste and all the other leaders who have dealt with this in the way they have is to stop looking the other way for once. For once and for all, take the opportunity provided for a ceasefire, and for justice and peace for the Palestinian people.

See this speech in context