Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Social Democrats for introducing this important motion. It has been put to the House at a critical stage during the terror that is being imposed on the Gazan people. "Israel's military operations have spread mass destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as secretary-general," are the words of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres. During his term he has seen the invasion of Ukraine; bloody civil wars in Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia and Sudan; and regional conflicts and insurgencies from Mozambique to Myanmar. It is the actions of the Israeli state against the civilians of Gaza that he finds unprecedented.

Top UN aid official, Martin Griffiths recently talked of Gazans being in search of anything they can get to survive. Bodies are lying on the streets and there is the rapid approach of famine in Gaza. This is a genocide being committed by Israel and it has two prongs. The first is the unprecedented military actions being carried out by the Israeli forces. Today again we heard that the Israeli State has told Gazans to leave Khan Yunis, which was a safe zone they told go people to go to in the first place. The Israel defense forces, IDF, is bombing and killing more civilians. The second prong is the near total deprivation of people in Gaza of food, electricity, water and medicine. The Israeli Government is using the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip. It is deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel while wilfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival. This is how Human Rights Watch has described the second prong of Israel's genocide. It is death by starvation, death by lack of clean water and death by preventable diseases. The people of Gaza are hurtling towards annihilation. Those who escape the bombs and bullets face death by hunger, thirst and sickness. This is exactly what genocide looks like and we have a moral and legal obligation to stop this. We must support South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice, ICJ. Even if this Government is still refusing to see what is staring them in the face we have an obligation to support the investigation in the ICJ. We do not need to wait. We can call this what it is. We can start a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions led by our State against Israel to force it to stop this genocide and until we have a real meaningful deal for peace, independence and self-determination for all Palestinians.

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