Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

Two days ago, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2803, a resolution endorsing the so-called Trump peace plan - a peace plan that, disgracefully, was welcomed by the Irish Government. We will probably hear it welcomed again today. It makes the saying from Tacitus, "they make a desert and call it peace," the most appropriate it has ever been because after two years of genocide, after killing at least 66,000 people, over 20,000 children, after imposing famine, after mowing people down while queuing for food, after destroying the majority of buildings, the hospitals, the schools, the universities, the homes in Gaza, now a peace is declared but it is no peace at all. It is a continued colonial carve-up that is remarkable only for how naked it is.

The UN resolution explicitly endorses the so-called "board of peace" as a "transitional administration". This is a board to be chaired by Donald Trump. The only other member we know who is going to be on it is Tony Blair, a war criminal, but presumably he will be joined by a series of other war criminals and these people are to be imposed, without vote and without any consultation with the Palestinian people, as new colonial viceroys on the people of Gaza.

What Trump plans to do there is set out in his own Trump plan. It was set out in that disgusting video about the Trump-Riviera plan for Gaza and then, in slightly more polite terms, it is in the peace plan as a "Trump economic development plan" and "a special economic zone". There is going to be an army of occupation called the international stabilisation force answerable, not to the Palestinian people, but to the viceroys on the board of peace. What is absent from the UN resolution and what is absent from the peace plan is the Palestinian people; the Palestinian people's right to self-defence, their right to determine their own government and their right to self-determination.

However, the counterpart to the genocide we saw openly unfolding for two years in Gaza, backed by western imperialism, armed by western imperialism, supported by western imperialism, the US, Germany, Britain, the EU, is the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

This year, 30,000 settlement units have been approved by the Israeli Government. The term "settlements" does not capture what is happening. Palestinian people are being violently removed from their land. Their land is being stolen from them today and taken by these Israeli settlers. Later on, the Israeli Government authorises and recognises this and more Palestinian land is stolen. At the time of the Oslo Accords, there were 250,000 illegal Israeli settlers. When Senator Frances Black first introduced this Bill, there were 600,000 such settlers and today there are 750,000 of them. The latest settlement is the so-called E1, which divides the West Bank in two, further isolating Palestinians in Jerusalem. It is all about a logic of extermination of the Palestinian people. That is what the genocide and the settlements are about.

This motion is an extremely modest proposal, as Deputy Boyd Barrett has outlined. It is in line with international law. The International Court of Justice is clear that states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings and to prevent trade or investment relations with the settlements. There is no mention just of goods there. International law is very clear. It is also in line with the strong recommendation of the Oireachtas foreign affairs committee, which strongly recommended "progressing the Bill" and that the prohibition on imports "should be extended to include trade in services". It is line with the promises made by Simon Harris and Micheál Martin over a year ago during the general election debate.

This motion is extremely minimal in what it asks, as is the Bill. Our motion could not be simpler or clearer, with only two very simple asks. One is that the Bill be implemented in full before Christmas and the other is that services be included. We have a Government that says it is not going to oppose this motion, so this will be the position of the Dáil after this debate. However, in the same breath as saying that it is not going to oppose the motion, the Government is saying that it is not going to guarantee that it will implement it before Christmas and that it has not yet decided if it is going to include services. It is a complete joke. The Government makes a farce of this place by saying that the Dáil can pass whatever it wants, that it will allow a simple two-ask motion to pass, but it will not give any commitment to actually implement it. That is the height of cynicism. What is it about? It is about cowardice. The Government does not want to face the prospect of TDs who support this Government voting against it. It does not want to see Members who supported the call at the foreign affairs committee to include services being pressured to vote against including services now. It does not want to reveal its real position to the Irish people, which is that it does not want to include services. It wants to water this legislation down. That is the truth of its position, which is one of extreme moral cowardice and extreme cynicism.

I will now address both the so-called good reasons put forward by the Government to explain why, in reality, it wants to back away from this, as well as the real reasons. One of the good reasons put forward by Simon Harris on a number of occasions is that he wants to include services but is afraid that there might be legal issues with it. There is no basis to that whatsoever. First, there is the position of the International Court of Justice, upon which the whole change of Government position was based, which makes no distinction between goods and services. That is the fundamental point in terms of international law. Second, there is now talk of Attorney General advice. This is the most blatant retroactive getting of advice to suit a political position. The Attorney General already gave advice on this and made no mention of any problem in terms of services. This is simply an attempt to find legal cover for the political retreat that the Government wants to engage in.

A second argument is that we do not want to be alone, but we are going so slowly, under public pressure, that we are no longer alone. Slovenia has already moved to ban imports by immediate government decision. In Belgium, there is a government announcement in relation to the occupied territories and Spain has moved on the importation of goods, as has the Netherlands. We are certainly no longer alone. The other argument that is now advanced, which is absolutely threadbare, is the idea that this will be unimplementable. How could we possibly do this in terms of services? The problem the Government has there is that it already does it in terms of services in Russia. The Government has implemented full sanctions and a ban on the import and export of goods and services with Russia, and IBEC accepted at a meeting of the foreign affairs committee that businesses had complied with that ban.

Now I come to the real reason for the Government's cowardice on this issue, which is pressure from US imperialism, lobbying from the US Chamber of Commerce and pressure from the US ambassador. It is very blatant that this is the case. There is an excellent new report from Uplift, called The Neutrality Files, which explains this bit by bit. Uplift's summary of the situation is that the Government's public justifications for not passing the occupied territories Bill, namely, EU law and costs, were a smokescreen for the real reason, which is capitulation to economic pressure from the US activated on behalf of Israel. In October 2025, Reuters broke a story that the Bill would be diluted as a direct result of corporate pressure. Later in October, speaking to the Dáil, the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, signalled that the Bill would go ahead without services. That is the truth. In October 2024, the US ambassador to Ireland, Ms Claire Cronin, warned of "consequences" for US companies in Ireland if the Bill proceeded. Hours later, the then Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, announced that the Bill would be shelved for review. We know that back in 2019 the then Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, in a confidential call quoted in leaked Israeli documents, confirmed that the Irish Government would be using a procedure known as a money message to seek to block the progress of the draft Irish legislation. That is all this is and the only thing that can force this Government to act is massive public pressure from below. That is why I will be on the streets with lots of others tonight at 5.30 p.m outside the Dáil.

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