Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ireland has a deeply felt understanding of the desire of people for the recognition of their own place, culture and existence. Eight hundred years of occupation and a great deal of repression did nothing to quell the Irish desire for freedom, self-determination, self-rule and the international recognition of our civil rights. The Irish State as it is today is often used as an international reference for how people with different cultures, ethnicity, religion and history can live in the same place and on the same land.

The history of Palestine is not remote from the history of Ireland. Principally, it recognises the desire of people to live freely in their own state. The ownership of land and the ability of peoples to live peacefully on that land are at the heart of the Palestinian question. The question of who should reside in that space and who can or should claim ownership of that land has been an international one dating back to 1917 and the Balfour Declaration. That declaration favoured the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, an area that had been under Ottoman rule for centuries and was placed under British stewardship and governorship in 1920 after a League of Nations mandate. Post the Second World War, Jewish migration to Palestine was encouraged and supported, as was the move to the recognition of the State of Israel in what was considered to be the Jewish biblical home. This was in spite of the significant Arab population in the region. This culminated in 1947 with the United Nations partition resolution to divide Britain's former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states.

The State of Israel declared its establishment on 14 May 1948, the eve of the British termination of the mandate. That termination of the mandate subsequently led to the first Arab-Israeli war. The subsequent 1949 armistice agreements established Israel's borders over most of the former mandate territory. A further conflict in 1967, the Six-Day War, saw Israel occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip and establish further settlements there.

Israel has normalised relationships in recent times with some of its Arab neighbours but the Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been an ongoing and seemingly intractable problem. The peace initiatives put forward by both Arab and US Governments in recent decades have failed to advance any recognition of a two-state solution or deal with the issues of the occupied territories. The military muscle provided to Israel, principally by the US, has allowed it to exert a strong military presence in the region. In so doing, it has failed to deal with progressing the issues of the Palestinian question and the Palestinian homeland. Israel has largely carried out discrimination against the Palestinian enclaves in the Gaza Strip and occupied territories. This has only served to increase hardline Arab resistance to the State of Israel. The hardline positions taken by the Israeli Government in enforcing its borders and its internal security have allowed Hamas to claim political support for its ongoing campaign of border and rocket attacks into Israel. The degree to which this activity has the support of the wider Palestinian people is impossible to judge. The actions of fundamentalist Islamic people within Hamas and the Palestinian movement is not. It culminated in the barbarism of 7 December, with the indiscriminate murder of Israeli settlers and the taking of hostages who remain prisoners of Hamas The main thrust of this activity was to develop a regional war drawing in other Arab states in an Arab coalition. The response of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government to invade Gaza with the stated purpose of annihilating Hamas and dismantling its war machine is also a mission that only serves to strengthen Arab resistance.

The prosecuting of this war has involved the indiscriminate bombing of population centres and refugees in pursuit of Hamas militants. The carnage and destruction are vast and it will take years, perhaps decades, to rebuild the infrastructure. The idea the Palestinian people will forget or forgive in a similar timeline is uncertain, to say the least. The human toll can never be justified in terms of the stated war efforts.

We in Ireland know the destruction of civil conflict. We know the enduring hurt and harm violence causes. We know that ultimately peace cannot be achieved until warring sides agree to sit down and seek a compromise solution. Israel has fought long and hard for recognition as an independent state. The idea that the Palestinian people should not be allowed the same rights is preposterous. That it is the State of Israel which opposed such rights is even more confounding given its genesis. The fact of the matter is that Israel's security cannot be assured in the future without arriving at a peaceful settlement with the Palestinian majority and its people. This also requires a recognition from those allied with Islamic fundamentalism of the right of the State of Israel to exist also. What must be agreed is the recognition on a Palestinian state and its borders and also the rights of its people to have free movement throughout that country and to be given access to other countries where diplomatic relations recognise the rights of such people to travel in and out. The recent actions of Ireland, Spain and Norway to recognise the State of Palestine send a strong message to the international community to back up the previous resolutions of the UN General Assembly. Just as it is unacceptable that some in the Arab world would wish to see solely the destruction of Israel, so too it is unacceptable for the present Israeli Government to adopt a position of no recognition for a future Palestinian state.

War begets war, violence begets violence and the people who suffer most are the general population. They are the ones with the least power, the least influence and the least protection from smart bombs and military might. It is said you cannot kill an idea unless you kill a people. The wilful destruction that those in hardline Arab positions and those in the hardline Israeli Government with to pursue cannot be condoned or understood and they must not be supported. The slaughter of innocent men, women and children on 7 October can never be justified. Nor can the military response of the Israeli Government which at this point has gone far beyond anything to do with the actions of that infamous day.

The Irish people have travelled the road of being subject to imperialism, colonialism and state-enforced discrimination. Despite all of that, our country has arrived at a place of recognition that for peace to be created, fostered and to endure, the recognition of individual rights and histories must be at the forefront of any possible settlement. Despite culture, language, religion and skin tone, the truth of the Palestinian question is that it is a human conflict. Only human recognition, relations and actions can solve it. It is obvious the present actors leading the war on both sides are very unlikely to be the people who will build the peace. That possibly remains a job that the international community at large can achieve and Ireland must remain at the vanguard of those efforts.

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