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

Let us look at what we have and then I will say what the alternative is. Referring to the Palestinians, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stated in 1948, and I am roughly paraphrasing him, that the only thing for the Arabs to do was leave. That is what they then did. In 1948, as part of establishing the state, 800,000 people were ethnically cleansed. Under international law, all of those people and their descendents, of whom there are millions now, have a right to return. Israel, under any guise, has no intention of vindicating that right. It has made that absolutely clear but it is a right under international law.

Are we committed to the Palestinian right to return which Palestinians have under international law? We should be. It is the only just thing to do but if we are committed to that, and that is what the Palestinians are committed to, then the two-state solution is a non-starter. So what is the alternative? Look to Ilan Pappé, for example, or Ghada Karmi, the fantastic Palestinian novelist - I do not know if the Minister of State has read her work. It has always been my view, and it used to be the view of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, that we should have a single state where everybody has equal rights. Imagine that. How radical is that? Jew, Arab, Christian, people of no religion should live in the land that all these people share and they should have equal rights. There are lots of Jewish people who support that. Millions of Jewish people are on the streets at the moment across the world calling for exactly that. They do not support the Zionist project. In East Jerusalem, Orthodox Hasidic Jews, who are a small group, are themselves being attacked by the Zionists because they believe in that and because they stand for Palestine, one state in which Jews, Christians and Arabs are equal, as was the case for thousands of years until the Israeli state was set up.

It is worth people knowing the history. In 1936, Sir Ronald Storrs, the British governor general of Jerusalem, when asked why Britain was supporting the establishment of the Israeli state, stated the intention was to create "a little loyal Jewish Ulster" in the Middle East to guard against "a sea of potentially hostile Arabism". It was, in other words, a divide and rule project to set people of different religions against one another in order that Britain and western interests would control the region. That is the truth. That is what set Jew and Arab against one another. The solution to that is one supported by many Jewish people and Palestinian people. Historically, it was the Palestinian position and, to be honest, it is one held by the vast majority of Palestinians because they have seen that the two-state solution has been a disaster. I ask the Government to seriously consider that.

Palestinians who are Israeli citizens have asked me to raise their plight. As well as the horrors that are going on in Gaza and despite there being no Hamas there, more than 100 people have been killed in the West Bank in the past four weeks while the settlements continue. Palestinians living with Israeli passports in Israel are suffering brutal repression at the moment. Artists, academics and anybody who puts anything on social media expressing even sympathy with people being killed in Gaza are being arrested, sacked and imprisoned. It is absolutely horrendous. Israel is doing that to its own citizens inside Israel if they express sympathy over the deaths of tens of thousands of people. I ask the Government to raise that with the Israeli ambassador. It is doing that to its own citizens as we speak.

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