Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

When they bring a child into the world, every parent does so with the same mixture of hope and trepidation. We have the same hopes and fears as we take that tiny bundle into our arms as we consider the enormous and fragile potential of that human life. We hold our mind's eye the milestones we hope to witness, the graduations, weddings, arrival of grandchildren, skinned knees, lost teeth and broken hearts. We pray in our hearts that we can help them steer that course into adulthood safely and in good health and that we can shelter them from the many threats of the wider world. This is same for me, as an Irish dad, as it is for a mother in Israel or a father in Gaza. We all want the best for our children. We want to protect our children.

We all felt that in the wake of the attacks on 7 October. We felt in some ways the outermost ripples of the shockwaves that convulsed the Israeli people as they saw the bright futures of their children snuffed out in an attack of ferocity and barbarism. We feel it too in the disproportionate and dehumanising response that violates international law and threatens our international rules-based system. We felt it viscerally as we witnessed the horrific scenes in Rafah last Sunday, where we saw parents gathering the body parts of their children. Hopes were shattered, futures exploded and bodies were blown asunder. No parent could watch that without feeling at least a faint echo of that unimaginable loss.

All conflicts end. So too will this one. What shadow will it cast? How will a generation which has been emotionally and physically maimed conceive a pathway to a lasting peace? Who in the tents among the ruins of Rafah can dream of any kind of future for their children? Too long a suffering can make a stone of the heart.

It has long been the view of the Irish people that the only path to peace lies in the two-state solution. We have learned hard lessons from our history about the futility, as Paul Brady put it, of trying to reach the future through the past and trying to carve tomorrow from a tombstone. We were isolated in that view when we first put it forward. Now that idea is in the mainstream of international opinion. For there to be a two-state solution, there needs to be two states.

I applaud the decision of the Government today, in tandem with our colleagues in Norway and Spain, and following the lead of many other nations across the world, to officially recognise the State of Palestine. I acknowledge the leadership of the Taoiseach and, in particular, our Tánaiste in his role as Minister for Foreign Affairs in bringing this to pass. I thank them not as a member of the Government, but as a citizen of this Republic. The moral bravery needed to take such a decision should not be underestimated.

In recognising the State of Palestine, we do not erode, diminish or deny the rights of any of the other nations of the world to exist in peace, nor do we support or endorse acts of depravity committed in the so-called service of any flag or nation. It is my firm belief that the long-term security and prosperity of the State of Israel will be enhanced, not eroded, by the recognition of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli ambassador tells us that the recognition of the State of Palestine sends the wrong message. She said, "I don't think that this is the message that Ireland wants to send to the world". I disagree. I think it is precisely the message we want to send the world. It is a message of peace that recognises the common shared humanity of the child born in Gaza and the child born in Jerusalem, and the equal intrinsic value of both of those human lives and their equal rights to hope, dream and aspire to a better future where they can live in peace and security.

Martin Luther King told us that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Sometimes when the curve of that arc is at its aphelion, at its furthest from its anchor point, it can feel very hard to believe in that upward trajectory, but I say to the people of Palestine that in recognising your place among the nations of the world this is some small effort from a small nation with its own history of repression to influence the course of history for the better. It is our fervent hope here that it brings you hope in this darkest of times.

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