Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)

Like everybody else, I welcome the efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. I hope the present peace agreement takes hold. I am very disturbed by reports that the Israeli Prime Minister has unilaterally sought to change certain fundamental aspects of that agreement. If so, he is acting in very bad faith.

The Israelis say they have achieved their war aims but I am not entirely sure what their war aims are. Their only stated war aim is the destruction and elimination of Hamas. I suppose from one point of view that is understandable, but it must be borne in mind that if something does not fundamentally change in the Middle East, and if the way in which the Israelis treat their Palestinian counterparts and neighbours does not change, then the conditions that brought Hamas, and before Hamas the PLO and other terrorist organisations, a number of which are still in operation out there, into existence do not change, it will not matter. Even if every single member of Hamas comes in tomorrow and surrenders, other similar organisations, whatever they wish to call themselves, will spring up.

There is no doubt the events of 7 October were barbaric beyond belief. However, to describe the Israeli reaction as proportionate or measured is to deprive language of meaning. We have had ad hoc brutality, 70,000 people dead, 20,000 of whom were children, people starving to death and food withheld; the Tánaiste spelled it out very eloquently. Then we have the threadbare excuses. A member of the Israeli military will appear on television when somebody hits a hospital instead of a military target and say that somebody in the military made a mistake and that they will have an inquiry into it. How many of these inquiries have been held? Have the results ever been published? Has anybody ever been held to account? I very much doubt it. Then there is the second excuse, that they killed X number of civilians but were targeting a Hamas terrorist. That is something akin to dropping an atomic bomb on a crowded shopping mall to get rid of one shoplifter. That is the level to which this has descended.

Incidentally, while I recognise the work done by President Trump and his team, I am very disappointed with the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the United States. There are several aspects of this agreement that need to be teased out, such as the question of Israeli withdrawal and the timescale for it and the fundamental question of Palestinian statehood. All of these issues have to be thrashed out. Instead of the Israelis saying they know there are things that have to be discussed, the Palestinians are being told that if they do not sign on the dotted line, as my colleague Deputy Crowe has said, Israel will not only withhold food and medicine but will rain down fire and brimstone on their heads and use the military power of the United States to help it continue unabated with the slaughter. That is not the way to approach a peace process, in my view.

Something has to be done about the West Bank. Obviously, it is not part of this agreement but something has to be done about it. There is continued aggressive encroachment by Israeli settlers, tens of thousands of them at this stage, actively supported by members of the Israeli military, without any sanctions or any effort by the Israeli Government to deter them. That simply cannot continue. I say again that if the Israelis continue to treat the Palestinians as they have done since the foundation of the Israeli state back in the 1940s, then there will be more groups such as Hamas in the future and endless conflict.

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