Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

At least 26,637 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza so far. Some 65,387 people have been wounded since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023. The number of people dead is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the city of Kilkenny being completely eliminated. Those are absolutely horrendous figures. Schools and hospitals have been vaporised. The rules of war have been dumped by the Israel Defense Forces. Some 215 Palestinians were killed in just the past 24 hours. We have seen manmade famine spread throughout the statelet. Words fail at the level of destruction that is happening at the moment. People are being purposely deprived of safety, medicine, healthcare and shelter. Israel, by its own admission, has sought to stop food and water reaching millions of people.

Today we hear it reported that half of the buildings in Gaza have been completely floored, which is incredible. A total of 1.9 million people have been displaced without a home, of which close to 1 million are women and girls. It is important to say that women and children have borne the brunt of Israeli violence over the past number of months, with over 16,000 women and children being killed. The Palestinian health ministry stated in the last day that occupation forces raided the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin fatally shooting three young men while they were in hospital wards. I understand that the IDF forces were dressed as medics when they assassinated people in the hospital.

It is impossible under any examination of what is happening to see the outcome as accidental. All of the levels of human terror constitute acceptable collateral damage from the perspective of the Israeli Government. This leaves the Israeli Government directly responsible for all of this but what are we responsible for here in Ireland? The reason this is happening is that there is no international accountability. The US, the EU and Britain have written a blank cheque for Israel to do what it is doing. This is a deep stain on the US, the EU and Britain. They have facilitated in many ways the horrors of the war.

Now we see the war spreading to other international fronts. Ships are being attacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea, there are attacks on south Lebanon and we have seen US troops killed in Jordan. We have also seen attacks on Iranian personnel in Syria. This is an extremely volatile situation that could spread throughout the region.

We have seen the Irish Government outsource our foreign policy position to the EU. There is no legal reason for doing this. It was not necessary under the treaties or European law. We have outsourced it to the EU which has distorted our views. The EU has been giving views on the international stage that are the direct opposite of our views. That is wrong.

We have had words from this Government but little action. Some of the actions the Government could take would be to recognise the state of Palestine and support the case by South Africa. We have a special relationship with the US but I have no evidence of how we have leveraged that special relationship to persuade the Americans to put further pressure on the Israelis and to stop funding the war. The Minister of State might tell me how many times his party leader has met with the US ambassador to impart our shock and horror at the US position on this? How many times has the Taoiseach been in contact with senior US politicians to put pressure on them to stop this? How many times has the Government reached out in any way to the US Administration to communicate our shock and apply as much pressure as we can to get the Americans to becomes doves instead of hawks?

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