Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, one issue dominated the European Council and, indeed, dominates all our thoughts in this House, in this country and in Europe and beyond. The carnage we are witnessing on a daily basis in Gaza is truly sickening. Our first priority must be to halt the killing, to have a ceasefire. This House united in that regard when the vote was put.

I welcome the efforts of the Taoiseach to build support for a ceasefire within the European Union. Although a position was arrived at among the EU 27 which managed to find agreement, it was not a call for a ceasefire, rather a call for pauses to allow for humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza and hostages to be released.

I understand the deep trauma felt in Israel at the 7 October attack by Hamas. Going door to door killing men, women and children and abducting infants and the elderly revisited the darkest moments of Jewish history but there can be no justification or rationalisation for what the state of Israel has done since. The systematic destruction, block by block, street by street, of one of the most densely populated areas in the world and the mass killing of civilians - children, elderly and women - must surely constitute a crime against humanity. It must stop. All of us with a voice must call for it to stop.

The division among the EU 27 was laid bare, as the Taoiseach stated, at the UN General Assembly vote. Although the resolution introduced by Jordan was supported by 121 countries, with 14 against and 44 abstentions, eight EU member states - Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Malta and Ireland - voted for it but four - Austria, Croatia, Czechia and Hungary - voted against and the majority, 15 member states, abstained.

There can be no military solution to this conflict. The killing will end, please God, soon. The future must be built on a foundation that will not constantly revisit pain and suffering on generation after generation. It must address the need for a safe and sovereign state of Israel side by side with a free, sovereign and viable state of Palestine.

The world cannot be onlookers. Ireland, small as it is, must be loud in our voice for peace now and we must constitute a building block of states to press with all our might for the only solution that will ensure the future, on in which yet unborn Palestinians and Israelis can grow and prosper without fear.

Hamas must release the terrified hostages that it currently holds, probably underground, including our own citizen, Emily Hand. The bombardment of Gaza must stop and the killing and eviction of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank must stop. It is almost unnoticed that, as the appalling unfolding tragedy of Gaza is shown on our screens hourly, the systematic eviction of families that have for generations been in the West Bank on land they have owned, forced out both by settlers and the Israeli military, is a shocking additional crime.

We on this island know full well that in Yeats's words:

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

We are watching a great horror. We know that in every community, every village and every meeting we go to and every time we look at our emails, the Irish people are begging and demanding that we do something to end this horror.

See this speech in context