Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On a personal level, I will take this opportunity to wish the Taoiseach well following his announcement earlier.

As the European Council prepares to meet tomorrow, the people of Gaza face horrifying levels of hunger and an imminent famine. A report compiled by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification describes this chapter of an ever-escalating human catastrophe as a man-made starvation and warns that 1.1 million people, half of Gaza's population, are at grave risk. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has said that more than 1 million people have completely exhausted their food supplies and are facing catastrophic hunger. This is the highest number of people facing starvation at any time anywhere in the world since the classification system was introduced more than two decades ago. I will read a quote:

People in Gaza are starving to death right now. The speed at which this man-made hunger and malnutrition crisis has ripped through Gaza is terrifying. There is a very small window left to prevent an outright famine and to do that we need immediate and full access to the north. If we wait until famine has been declared, it’s too late. Thousands more will be dead.

Those are the harrowing words of the World Food Programme executive director, Cindy McCain. Those words lay out in very simple and clear terms what is now at stake. Having endured 165 days of genocide, slaughter, displacement, dispossession and witnessing their sons, daughters, mothers and fathers annihilated in their thousands, the people of Gaza now face disastrous famine and disease. UNICEF has warned that Gazan children are now dying a slow death due to hunger. Those Palestinians in Gaza who Israel has not managed to murder through gunfire, tank fire or air raid, it now seeks to extinguish through starvation. Israel is literally using starvation as a weapon of war.

Oxfam has highlighted the cruelty of Israel's approach. On Monday, it stated that Israeli forces were preventing a warehouse full of international aid from reaching starving people in Gaza. They are also blocking key aid co-ordinators from UNRWA from entering the strip to get to work improving the humanitarian response on the ground.

The catastrophe of famine facing the people of Gaza underscores the need for an immediate, full and permanent ceasefire. Of course, the people of Gaza need humanitarian aid. They urgently need food, water, medical supplies and clothing. However, the only thing that will transform this horrific situation is a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter. Even as the spectre of famine stalks Gaza, Israel continued its relentless bombardment, launching airstrikes on the city of Rafah, the place to which hundreds of thousands of Gazans were forcefully displaced in the wake of Israel's initial onslaught. There is nowhere left for people to flee. There is nowhere left to go. They are trapped and yet Netanyahu and his regime state that they are determined to go through with a ground offensive in the city. There will be no real evacuation of these Palestinians, no protective corridors and no safe zones. The world absolutely knows what will happen to the people of Rafah should Israel launch a ground assault. There is no need for prediction or prophecy.

Over the past six months, Mr. Netanyahu and his army have shown us exactly what will happen: slaughter, destitution and genocide. What has been inflicted on the people of Gaza has been inflicted before the eyes of Europe and the world. It is atrocity layered upon atrocity. It is the greatest human rights violation of our time, yet it appears that worse is to come as famine approaches and as Israel weighs up a ground invasion of Rafah. Europe must now take a stand and defend the values that it claims to cherish such as human dignity, freedom and justice. Europe must lay out how it will effectively respond to treat the mass starvation in Gaza, what role it will play to stop Israel's planned invasion of Rafah and how it will help to bring this genocide to an end. Peace is the only way this can be done. Peace must now be the collective will of the international community and the path to peace can only be forged through an immediate and full ceasefire. I put it to the Taoiseach and Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, that this will only be brought about by meaningful action. Today the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach is discussing Deputy John Brady's Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023, which contains a meaningful action to withdraw Irish taxpayers' money from investing in companies that profit from Israel's illegal settlements. We have before this House the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, which is another meaningful action that could be taken. Both Houses of the Oireachtas have voted to call on the Government to recognise the state of Palestine and have proposed meaningful actions that could be taken, none of which has been taken despite the fact that each could be taken unilaterally by this Government.

The Taoiseach referred to the EU-Israel Association Agreement and his letter, alongside Prime Minister Sánchez of Spain, to the European Commission requesting a review of that agreement. Essentially the answer from the Government is that they have made the request and other member states have decided not to accept our premise and, therefore, we shrug the shoulders and Europe does nothing. I believe that a message needs to be brought very clearly to the European Council this week.

I agree with the Taoiseach's assessment in respect of Ukraine and I agree with his analysis of Russia under the Putin regime but the greatest incentive and the greatest succour for Putin and his allies is any inclination that Europe is equivocal on adherence to international law. The truth is there is a stark and gross equivocation on the part of the European response to the illegal actions by Russia in Ukraine to that of the illegal actions of Israel in Gaza. Unless there is an equivalence, a consistency and an equal application of sanctions against those regimes that engage in brutal oppression of their neighbouring states, I fear the message will be lost on all bar those brutal dictators such as Putin and Netanyahu.

This is an opportunity for Europe to act. This is a time for the EU to state very clearly whether it is actually on the side of human rights, of human dignity and of adherence to international law. I hope that Europe soon takes the right course because it is very much off course at the moment. The European project could endure long lasting, if not permanent, damage to its credibility on these areas if that course is not changed quickly.

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