Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over the past month and more, the world has watched in absolute horror as the Gazan people face annihilation. Missiles rain down on 2 million people who have been denied food, fuel and water in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. We are bearing witness to a cataclysmic event. We are bearing witness to war crimes. We are bearing witness to genocide. Israel acts with impunity through its indiscriminate slaughter of a trapped population. Entire families have been killed in their beds; many more are trapped in the rubble. Some 1.1 million have been forcibly displaced in an event that echoes the Nakba of 1948. Schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure are being flattened. Where they still stand, blackouts are a constant risk, with the likelihood that fuel will completely run out on Thursday.

This ferocious siege is not out of character for Israel. For decades Palestinians have had their lives ravaged and brutalised by Israel's apartheid regime. They have been living under an occupation, blockaded for 16 years. Their land has been occupied and annexed. They have been denied the right to return.

What is the international community doing? In truth, very little. Those countries that have remained silent are complicit and have set the context in which the deaths of thousands of men, women and children are viewed as permissible. Shame on those western countries that have failed to speak up to call for a ceasefire. Even greater shame on those countries that have called this mass slaughter a legitimate act of self-defence.

We must take a stand against Zionist, racist sentiments that are deployed to legitimate mass displacement and ethnic cleansing. We must call for a ceasefire now and hold Israel to account. It must be held to account at the International Criminal Court, ICC. Without a resounding and unified voice from the international community, Palestinians will remain under constant and existential threat. Ireland can and must lead. I call on the Government to support the motion and to make the referral to the ICC.

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