John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ireland's long overdue recognition of the State of Palestine. As we look on that state or what remains of it today, only a fraction is under Palestinian authority. Israel has steadily and illegally annexed huge areas of Palestinian territory, employing a strategy of apartheid, displacement and dispersion. Palestinians remaining in these territories are left a fragmented people living in South Africa-like Bantustans, subject to indiscriminate violence from the state and from illegal colonial Israeli settlers. There are over 700,000 Jewish Israeli settlers living in more than 144 illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Recently the Israeli Minister of Settlement and National Missions said:

There will never be a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. Every cultured person in the world knows that this land is ours, for the Israeli people and only for us.

They claim there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. Today's announcement, while long overdue, is a beacon of hope to Palestinians that there still is a Palestinian state and there are still Palestinian people and always will be.

This action should not be symbolic. The next steps need to be taken now. As the bombs continue to fall on Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza, we need to see the full implementation of international law. We need to see the application of sanctions, not just against the State of Israel but the individual architects of its campaign of genocide. We need to see the establishment of a full Irish Embassy in East Jerusalem, the implementation and enactment of the occupied territories Bill and the introduction of the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill. We need a commitment that, if the war criminal Netanyahu sets foot in this State, he will be arrested immediately. Let the message go from the Dáil today to the people of the world on behalf of the Irish people that, in our thousands and millions, we are all Palestinians.

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