Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Go raibh maith agat as sin. Cuirim fáilte freisin roimh H. E. Dr. Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid. You are very welcome, madam ambassador, and we are honoured to have you here.

Today we stand with the Gazan people, who face annihilation. Entire families have been wiped out. Millions have been displaced from their homes and schools and hospitals have been obliterated. They are now starving and blockaded on all sides. Some 14,000 children are on the brink of starvation. There have been 11 weeks of a blockade of food, a blockade of water and a blockade on medicines. More than 500 have been killed in a matter of days. Humanitarian aid has been used as a weapon of war and there has been collective punishment again against the Palestinian people. The siege is continuing. Not an ounce of food or a drop of water has been distributed. The bombardment and killing is continuing as the air and ground offensives intensify. The mass displacement of the people of Gaza is continuing.

All of this is carried out in full sight of the world and in full sight of international leaders. They see the carnage, the collective punishment, the starvation and the mass displacement. All are breaches of international law. They have long known that Israel, an occupying power, imposes an apartheid regime. All of this suffering Israel is responsible for and Israel must be held to account. Its actions are not simply wrong, but are criminal. They are genocidal. Israel continues to act with impunity because, very simply, it can. Major Western powers are not alone turning a blind eye; they are protecting Israel from any meaningful sanctions and they are continuing to fund and sell arms to Israel. They are complicit in every single thing that is happening. The EU now reviews its trade agreement with Israel. Britain has suspended trade talks with it. This is very little and very late. We need much more. We need action. We need sanctions. We need an end to the arming and funding of Israel's war machine. Today my colleague and First Minister in the North Michelle O’Neill has written to the British Prime Minister demanding that Britain end the export of arms to Israel. The British Government has a legal and a moral obligation to stop arming Israel when there is a clear and obvious risk that these weapons are being used to slaughter Palestinian children.

That obligation applies to the United States of America and to European powers that are funding and generating a genocide. Stop it. Stop that now. Ireland also needs to act because words are not enough - neither weasel words nor carefully crafted platitudes - as a refugee population is being decimated. Calls for restraint will not cut it either. Action is needed. Sanctions are needed.

Today Deputy Pearse Doherty and I have brought forward legislation to stop Ireland's involvement in the sale of Israeli war bonds, which are used to fund the genocide in Palestine. It is going to be debated in the Dáil next week. It is utterly unacceptable - an obscenity in fact - that the Irish Central Bank oversees the sale of Israeli war bonds right across the EU. It is completely at odds with Ireland's position in respect of humanitarian standards and international law; a position that is against occupation, terror and genocide. Yet when I raised this with the Taoiseach yesterday, his response was to call our legislation "repulsive". That is the word he used.

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