Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Bacik will take the last two minutes of my time.

We have witnessed a level of ongoing savagery and brutality in Israel and Palestine in the past two weeks that has shocked the world. The savage attack on Israeli men, women and children on 7 October and the taking of 250 hostages by Hamas are inexcusable and deplorable. The response by Israel, in the bombardment of Gaza, the levelling of whole districts and the mass killing of civilians of all ages, is wrong and cannot be justified. Israel's actions to date breach international humanitarian law and must be called out by the international community.

The laying siege to Gaza and withholding of water, fuel and food for 2 million people, including 1 million children, cannot form part of any justifiable action by a democratic state. The order to evacuate northern Gaza under threat of further bombardment, including the very young, the infirm and the elderly, has echoes of the darkest experiences of humanity. Hospitals with newborn infants and the critically ill cannot be evacuated. Hospitals, as the House will be aware, are not places of safe refuge in this particular conflict.

Before last night, hospitals had been hit by Israeli munitions but last night we saw a new level of carnage and horror - the attack on the al-Ahli hospital. An impartial international investigation into what happened at that hospital must be carried out by the International Criminal Court and there must be, in this instance and in all other breaches of international law, an accounting and a call for people to be held to account. There can be no impunity for any person or organisation who commits war crimes or crimes against humanity.

What happened in the past 11 days or so, of course, has not come about in a vacuum. I say this not by way of making excuses - I heard that comment made - but, rather, by putting things in context. The tragic history of this region has been known to the world for decades. The periodic conflicts, as in the Six-Day War of 1967 when Israel fought with Syria, Jordan and Egypt, or the subsequent Yom Kippur War of 1973, were followed by numerous efforts to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Some of those efforts came close to success, as in the Oslo Accords. None, however, succeeded in providing a lasting resolution to the legitimate requirements for an independent and sustainable Palestinian state existing alongside an independent and secure Israel.

In all the decades, Palestinian people have yearned for their own homeland, a deep-seated yearning that the people of the Irish nation know full well. In all those decades, it was those displaced Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank and those who are scattered throughout neighbouring countries who have suffered the most. The scattering of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1948 fractured a society that has struggled ever since. The Nakba, or catastrophe, is an unhealed wound. Of all nations, we know the weight and burden of history. We know that wounds untreated and ignored fester and spread. We know, too, of the weight of history on the people of Israel. I had the privilege many years ago, on behalf of the Irish Government, to lay a wreath at Yad Vashem and to plant a tree there. We have to understand the psyche of the Israeli people too.

We had hoped, in the 21st century, that through negotiation and good will, we could resolve long-standing conflicts and agree amicable accommodations. That was our own experience on this island, difficult, faltering, incomplete as it undoubtedly is and remains. Fundamentally, however, we have an acceptance that without violence, a structure could be built acceptable to all or at least to the great majority. The invasion of Ukraine, the expulsion of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and the carnage that we now witness hourly in Israel and Palestine have knocked hopes back but we in this nation, with our history, must not despair in the face of such awfulness. We must seek still to be advocates for peace.

The threatened ground invasion of Gaza will, if it occurs, bring another unimaginable catastrophe. As the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said, the fate of the entire region hangs in the balance. An armoured invasion of Gaza, an urbanised zone that is heavily populated, would cause casualties in numbers we have not seen previously. How could a mighty military, in tanks and armoured vehicles, determine who is Hamas and who is not? Urban warfare, where Hamas has dug itself in for years, will be bloody and long-lasting. This is a time for restraint, for all nations to press for an end to violence.

There must be an immediate ceasefire. Humanitarian relief must flow to the impoverished people of Gaza. All hostages held in Gaza must be released and returned to their loved ones and peace must be restored. Then we cannot simply return to the status quo.

Israel is entitled to exist within its secure borders. Equally, the state of Palestine is entitled to exist with its own security and viable borders. The international community must resolve to make this happen and apply whatever pressure is required to bring it about. We know how difficult that will be and we have decades of evidence to show that not achieving it will create even more chaos.

The region and much further afield hangs in the balance. Malevolent actors will want to drive matters over the precipice into chaos. Let us, a small nation, be a voice for peace, a just future and, foremost and immediately, an end to killing.

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