Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We need to be absolutely clear about what is happening in Palestine, which is nothing less than ethnic cleansing and genocidal slaughter. None of us could disagree with what Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council said when he stated, "The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age." That is fairly straightforward. We have to realise what this is, namely, an outlier event caused by a right-wing regime in Israel that does not care about men, women or children and will present white as being black. This is what we are dealing with, and the European Council meeting cannot but deal with this as one of the biggest issues that face the world at this time.

We did have a truce but, unfortunately, it was not extended as we had hoped it would be. It could, possibly, have led to something more enduring and to the roadmap to Palestinian statehood that is required. That is the only solution both for Palestinian people and to provide security to Israel. Let us be clear, however, as Benjamin Netanyahu was when he stated, "We will continue this war until we achieve the three goals: Freeing all of our hostages, completely eliminating Hamas and ensuring that no threat like this will ever come from Gaza again." The only way I can see that happening is by the removal of the Palestinian people from Gaza.

While this is happening, there have been budgetary increases in respect of new moneys for new illegal settlements. That is the regime that is in operation and that is what it is doing. We in Ireland have been clear in calling this out for what it is, but none of it is enough. I accept there is no magic wand to deliver what we want from Benjamin Netanyahu, but if nobody is going to call him out properly and if there are absolutely no sanctions against this regime, I assume it is business as usual as far as it is concerned. I have not been entirely impressed with an awful lot of the statements of the European Union but even Josep Borrell understood the idea that there has been an insufficient level of empathy for the Palestinian lives that have been lost. He spoke about the global south, where countries were criticising the position of the European Union as absolutely one-sided. We were talking earlier about Ukraine and the need for solidarity, but that argument is lost because there is such one-sided action from the European Union.

There are a number of things we would like to see. The Taoiseach has spoken previously about a group of eight states. If a group of eight states are able and willing to make real moves, that needs to happen within a reasonable timeframe. We know what we can do here, including with the occupied territories Bill. Sometimes governments will get the legal advice they want, but if there is a difficulty with that Bill and if that is what the Government is saying, could we not look at introducing the Illegal Israeli Settlement Divestment Bill or some alternative means of doing that in order that this State will not in any way, shape or form support illegal settlements? France has spoken about sanctions, and I would like to think we will follow it up in that conversation because we need to see real action. There has been an abject failure in holding Israel to account and we require that Ireland take a step. It is the Mary Manning moment and we cannot fail to act.

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