Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the incredibly problematic situation in the Middle East. Over the past 18 months, violence has erupted across the Middle East. However, today I wish to speak about the Middle East before October 2023 - the violence at the hands of Israeli colonists in occupied Palestine; the systematic functioning of Israeli apartheid; and how Palestinians are constantly facing state-sanctioned violence.

We also need to consider the impact of the carte blanchewhich has been given to Israel in its acts of military aggression across the region.

In 1948, Palestine was partitioned by the UN. This plan gave Israelis, who made up less than 30% of the population, more than half of the land of Palestine. This injustice led to the first Arab-Israeli war. During this period mass expulsions of Palestinians were taking place at the hands of terror organisations such as the Haganah and the Irgun whose members formed the new IDF. This event is known as the Nakba as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their land and those who chose to stay were murdered. The Nakba, meaning the catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestine upon which Israel was founded. More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed as people fled to refugee camps - some now famous, such as Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, which has since been levelled and its residents killed, missing or ethnically cleansed.

When we discuss the current ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the genocide in Gaza, we must remember the precursors to current events. These actions have been done in the name of an ancestral claim to the land of Palestine as a 2,000-year-old promise. What about the Palestinians who lived there 70 years ago? We must show that human rights and the enforcement of the rules-based international order are felt by real people and are not simply concepts for discussion. We must ensure that nations who perpetrate, support or are silent in the face of genocide face consequences for their complicity.

In Israel as well as occupied Palestine we see time and again the use of an apartheid system to ensure Israeli domination over Palestinians. In Israel, any Jewish person can immigrate to Israel and claim citizenship immediately, while Palestinians are refused the right to return to their family homes. Israeli citizenship law places far more restrictions on Arabs in obtaining Israeli citizenship. People from the vast majority of the Middle East such as Iraq, Yemen and the occupied territories are barred from gaining Israeli citizenship.

The education system in Israel is split between Jewish, Jewish secular and Arab schools. Arab schools are systematically underfunded. Palestinians in Israel cannot leave even if they do not have citizenship as they can be barred from ever returning. Palestinians in the occupied territories may not drive or walk on certain roads and they have different coloured registration plates on vehicles. Many Palestinian political parties have been banned as they refuse to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. In 2018, the Knessett passed the Jewish State Act, which allows for the creation of segregated spaces. This Act results in legal segregation which we all witnessed in apartheid South Africa. The legal status of Palestinians is determined purely on where they were born. In Acre in Israel they must be tried in a civilian court. In Ramallah in occupied Palestine they can be tried in a military court with no legal team to defend them or a translator. Many human rights and civil liberties advocacy groups describe this as a fundamental aspect of Israeli apartheid.

The constant and systematic use of violence to maintain Jewish supremacy has created an environment of militarism which has spilled out across the region. Most recently this has been targeted at Iran on a spurious justification of a pre-emptive defensive strike. We must be clear that the Iranian regime is oppressive. However, people cannot be bombed into freedom. Nor can liberty be enforced through the use of arms.

The dangerous action of Israel and its ally, the United States, to bomb Iran has made the Cold War of the Middle East searingly hot. The choice to bomb nuclear facilities was a failed mission, but the ecological and human cost of this operation had it been successful would have been utterly catastrophic. This jingoistic mindset is a relic of the past and yet we see the Trump and Netanyahu Administrations use military action to bolster their domestic popularity.

Again, we should remember how the Iranian Ayatollahs gained power. It was after a puppet regime was installed by the US and Britain. This brutal regime was deeply unpopular and collapsed in the face of such discontent. The puppet regime led by Mohammad Reza Shah was installed after the democratically-elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, attempted to form a sovereign-wealth fund by nationalising Iranian oil production. We must call out the human rights abuses on all sides of the current conflict and recognise that only through dialogue and multilateralism can we secure peace for the people of the region who have suffered through bombardment due to the political choices of their governments.

The European Union's response to this crisis has been completely lacking. Senior members of the European Commission recently declared sympathy with Israel despite the fact it had chosen to bomb Iran seemingly out of the blue. Ireland has a special status. As a member state of the European Union which has uniquely experienced a great deal of violence at the hands of a foreign power in our history, we have a corresponding duty to stand up for people who face such violence and war. A report published just this week by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation in Palestine explicitly states:

...where corporate entities continue their activities and relationships with Israel, with its economy, military and public and private sectors connected to the occupied Palestinian territory, they may be found to have knowingly contributed to

a. violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination

b. annexation of Palestinian territory, maintenance of an unlawful occupation and therefore the crime of aggression and associated human rights violations and

c. crimes of apartheid and genocide.

The Minister of State spoke earlier about divisiveness in this House and that we should all be singing off the same hymn sheet. The difficulty I have with that sentiment is that those in government have the power to take the actions we need to see. Those options are to pass the occupied territories Bill in full, stop the facilitation of Israeli genocide bombs, end the endorsement of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, sanction Israel and use our diplomatic power as a member state at the EU level to end the EU-Israel association agreement and to introduce sanctions at the same level as Russia and to push for EU-level recognition of Palestinian statehood. These are not moral choices anymore; they are also legal necessities. The people of Iran and Palestine have been targeted with a militarist agenda which has only increased the instability of the entire Middle East region. We must stand against military unilateralism no matter the perpetrator and end this onslaught of violence.

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