Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)

After 78 years of occupation, with Palestinians driven off their land, hounded and subjected to exile, murder, torture and apartheid - the list goes on - in the past 24 months, we have seen levels of depravity never witnessed by my generation. There have been aerial bombardments, slaughter on a scale that words cannot describe, starvation and neighbourhoods bombed out of existence and flattened by the war criminals of Israel. An unknown number of people are buried beneath the rubble. In the West Bank, 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers are living there after driving Palestinians off their land. Over 700 people have been murdered in the last two years by Israeli terrorists in the West Bank. Some 6 million Palestinians are exiled as refugees outside of Palestine.

We now have a peace plan. I have concerns about the peace plan because it was created by the very people who have armed, supported and financed Israel, and have used Israel for the last 78 years as the policeman of the West. I am sceptical, unfortunately, about Trump’s board of peace. It has all the signs of the Western powers trying to maintain their influence and control in the region. I hope it can be turned into a peace plan that works but it needs to be changed. Palestinians must be central to all developments in their own lands. The Palestinian Authority must be reformed and fully involved. The new police force has to be comprised of Palestinians from their own neighbourhoods in Gaza and the West Bank to police the areas with the consent of the people of those areas.

I have concerns about the international stabilisation force. Should it not be a UN force? I ask the Government to raise its voice on that. It is an international stabilisation force but who is it made up of? The Yanks and who else? It is driven by them and controlled by them. We still have a bit of neutrality and credibility left, and we need to use them. I ask the Government to use its voice to ensure that Palestinian self-determination is at the core of all proposals for Palestine and that all possible efforts are made to advance the case for Palestinian statehood.

We say “Yes” to the two-state solution and “Yes” to the release of all hostages, including the Palestinian hostages who are held by Israel in inhumane conditions in Israeli prisons. We must ensure that Israel is brought to the International Criminal Court, particularly Netanyahu and his ministers, who need to be brought to trial for the war crimes they have committed. We must pass the occupied territories Bill here and continue to press for EU sanctions. Like other EU countries, we must move quickly with that Bill and implement those sanctions ourselves, but also at a European level. I ask the Government to use its offices to do that as quickly as possible.

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