Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion and I commend the Tánaiste for bringing it before the House. It is a strong motion highlighting in explicit terms the scale of the violence, barbarity and inhumanity we see being played out before our eyes in real time in Gaza. The direct and indirect consequences on the lives of people who bear no blame for the atrocities commenced by Hamas on 7 October are unthinkable, from the bomb blast that blows a child's limbs apart to the amputation of damaged limbs without recourse to anaesthetic, from the unspeakable loss of parents mourning their children to the unbearable pain of mothers undergoing cesarean section without recourse to anaesthetic, and from slow deaths trapped under rubble to slow deaths through starvation or disease. These are atrocities. Whatever the provocation and however well-founded the anger, submitting entire populations to this level of barbarism cannot be justified either by Israel or by Hamas. Those perpetrating these actions will be harshly judged by history.

I acknowledge the strength of feeling of the Irish people on this subject and their feelings of solidarity for people not just in Gaza but the wider Palestinian people. We heard from the Tánaiste that we are seeing the situation in the West Bank rising to boiling point also. I stand with them and I feel the same sense of outrage. We know that "genocide" is one of the heaviest words in the English language. It is freighted with memories of peoples extinguished through the inhumanity of others. Deputy Boyd Barrett has referred to this previously, saying that the crime of genocide is the worst of the worst. I agree with him. I also agree with the Taoiseach when he says that precisely for this reason, and precisely because it is the worst of all crimes, we have to make sure we apply the term correctly.

We await the outcome of the preliminary hearings taken by South Africa at the ICJ. I welcome the commitment in the motion to consider strongly an intervention once the judgment is made. It is difficult to escape the conclusion, when one witnesses the obliteration of agricultural land, the flattening of schools, the elision of entire families, the destruction of historical records and the genocidal pronouncements of senior Israeli politicians, that the goal of at least some of the Israeli leadership is the erasure of an entire people and a nation.

I am reminded of a verse in the Book of Judges, which I believe is shared by Jews and Muslims in their holy books: "And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt." We are seeing history repeat itself. Let us hope that international pressure can put an end to this terrible conflict and that we see a lasting ceasefire and the resumption of humanitarian aid, and that we may work in the longer term towards a lasting peace through the two-state solution.

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