Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The people of this country in their majority have long recognised Palestine. Finally, the Government has caught up with the people. It is a pity it has taken seven months of a genocidal massacre in Gaza and decades of ethnic cleansing by Israel, illegal occupation, the siege of Gaza and brutal suppression of Palestinian rights, but it is a step forward. It will mean very little if it is just symbolic. It has to be accompanied by sanctions to stop the genocide and by a recognition that a state that commits genocide in Gaza, a state that is based on apartheid and on decades of ethnic cleansing, is not a normal state. It needs to be denormalised and dismantled. The Taoiseach asked earlier what we meant when we spoke about this. I would like to ask him if apartheid has any place in the world. Does he put a free and liberated Palestine beside an apartheid State of Israel? That is what two states means. I say apartheid has no place in the world. A free and liberated Palestine would give equality, freedom and self-determination to everybody, regardless of whether they were Muslim, Jewish, Christian or of no religion. In respect of anywhere else in the world, that is what the Taoiseach would probably argue for too. Yet when it comes to Palestine, we argue for apartheid-type partition.

If it is just symbolic and we keep making reference to that, Israel is not going to stop. It is absolutely clear. They are unapologetic about the genocide. They are unapologetic about apartheid. The United States are standing behind them, cheering them on, and indeed even threatening the International Criminal Court for calling for prosecutions against this state. The world has to recognise that Israel is a rogue regime like apartheid South Africa. That apartheid system and the occupation have to be dismantled if we want peace.

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