David Norris (Independent)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

—commends the Government for its balanced policy towards Israel/Palestine and in the light of recent tragic events affecting both communities and of Ireland's Presidency of the EU requests that the Government use its position to ensure that this problem remains a priority area for the EU;

—notes with satisfaction the presentation of the common EU submission on the construction of the wall separating and encircling the Palestinian population of the West Bank to the International Court of Justice;

—welcomes the presentation of a national submission outlining Ireland's views on the matter; and requests that the Government

(1) ensure that Ministers Cowen and Kitt continue to monitor the situation in depth and in particular to continue the practice of visiting both Israel and the West Bank/Gaza,

(2) continue to raise human rights issues with both sides, and

(3) maximise opportunities to support the beleaguered inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza in their current distress through humanitarian projects.

I have deliberately framed this motion in a way that, with the help of the Leader of House, it will not be challenged but will go through unopposed. It is such a sensitive issue that it is important we have consensus on it.

I have travelled backwards and forwards to Israel and Palestine for the past 30 years. I have a long-term relationship and we live very close to where the recent tragic suicide bombing took place. I would like particularly to draw the Minister's attention to something quite important, namely an exchange of letters that took place between myself and President Arafat, whom I visited recently. There has been much criticism stating that he has not properly condemned suicide bombing. I wrote to him thanking him for his hospitality and stated:

One matter however remains to which I feel it is necessary to return — and that is the question of suicide bombing which has tragically resumed. While I appreciate the suffering and distress to which the Palestinian people have been subjected I feel that such acts present a very serious barrier to progress. I am convinced as are all the senior representatives of the Palestinian Authority that I met that such action is not only grossly morally wrong but also politically counterproductive. Such events merely provide an alibi for further Israeli mistreatment. They also seriously undermine the work that a number of us within the democratic parliaments of Europe are attempting on behalf of the Palestinian people.

With the help of Dr. Ali Halimeh who transmitted this message directly to President Arafat I received this morning the following communication from Ramallah in which Dr. Halimeh says:

I have been instructed directly by President Arafat to state the following:

The President and the Palestinian National Authority strongly condemn all attacks against civilian targets.

Suicide bombings do not serve the national interest of the Palestinian people.

We consider all attacks directed at innocent civilians as terrorist attacks.

The Palestinian National Authority, despite the total destruction of its security infrastructure, especially in the West Bank, has managed to intercept sixteen suicide bombers in three months. We have alerted the Israeli security forces to those who we have failed to stop.

President Arafat assures you and the people of Ireland of his commitment to do everything possible to put a halt to these attacks.

That finally nails the statement, frequently heard on RTE, among other places, that President Arafat encourages them. It is a very important development and I draw the attention of the House to it.

I am naturally closer to the Israelis than to the Palestinians in the sense that this has been my lived experience. I admire the Israelis for their courage, their ingenuity, their technical skills, for making the desert blossom and so on. However, being close to them also means that I have become more aware of the betrayal of the humanitarian ideals of the Jewish people by the present Government and its descent into moral chaos. I do not believe that the use of murder by a Government as an instrument of policy should be tolerated in any society. However, I make the point that the soul of Israel is not dead for the ideals of Judaism are nobly incarnated by people like Esru, a Jerusalem plumber, an ordinary man who goes every Saturday to Hebron to try to help the distressed people, taking the elderly to hospital, collecting their medicine, trying to rebuild their shattered homes and documenting abuse like that of the Physicians for Human Rights that I witnessed at Tulkarm, distinguished consultant surgeons humiliated and abused by their fellow Israelis guarding the ghetto and kept waiting in the rain before they are allowed into the camps where they perform operations and bring in medical supplies. One of these men told me that he has been coming every Saturday for 15 years. I must also mention the Israeli soldiers and airmen who have refused to obey orders which they consider a violation of human rights laws, protocols and international laws. I quote from an open letter written to Sharon by members of the commando unit Sayeret Matkal and published in The Irish Times of Monday, 2 February, in which they stated: "We shall no longer take part in the deprivation of basic human rights from millions of Palestinians, we shall no longer serve as a shield in the crusade of the settlements, we shall no longer corrupt our moral character in missions of oppression."

That there are decent people of conscience and of courage in Israel who plainly detest the road towards full-scale ethnic cleansing, towards which Sharon is speeding a frightened and confused nation, can be confirmed also by the position taken by one of the so-called refuseniks, Itai Swirski, who said:

We are there [in the territories] to protect 5,000 Israelis in Gaza living amongst 1.2 million Palestinians. How do we discriminate? We treat the person by the colour of his skin, by the colour of his ID card, by the colour of the licence plate on his car, by whether he wears the Kippa or not. If the person is not a settler you will see him immediately as an enemy as you will stop him at the check point and make him wait for hours losing a large part of his school time, not being able to reach a hospital, his daughter's school, his work place. If a settler, he is gone in a minute.

These idealistic young people have been denounced in the Israeli Parliament but have had the moral courage to continue their protest issuing public statements such as the following which some have seen as treasonable but which I see as the highest form of morality:

They say we did an antidemocratic act, they say we damaged Israeli democracy. This democracy has a backyard. This democracy has a basement and in this basement 3.5 million people are imprisoned, they do not take part in this wonderful democratic show that is being played on stage.

This democracy sends out soldiers to make sure that those people stay behind the scenes and do not interrupt the show. We will not take part in this show anymore. International protest must show solidarity with these brave figures.

These are Israeli voices. It is also noticeable that the four previous heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service, issued a joint statement describing Sharon's policy as catastrophic, as did a former Israeli Army chief. Even more remarkable are the activities of the Association of the Bereaved in which Arab and Jewish people who have lost family members to violence meet together to help the process of personal healing and to advance the cause of peace.

Israel was established in 1948 as a result of a United Nations resolution. However, there was another part to this resolution. This sought to provide a state also for the original Palestinian inhabitants from the remains of the divided land. We are still waiting for that second shoe to drop. It is astonishing that 60 years after Europe solved its problem of conscience at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs there is still no Palestinian state. Of course, the surrounding Arab countries did little to help, and their record is shameful. In many instances they treated their Palestinian brothers as badly or worse than the Israelis. Then they fought a series of incompetent and wasteful aggressive wars against Israel — an already traumatised people. Although it was subject to attack, Israel has also consistently abused its position both in terms of morality and international law in what has come to be known as the Occupied Territories. I could quote from any number of legal sources to show that international protocols have been exceeded.

I have just returned from a visit with two Oireachtas colleagues, Deputy Liz O'Donnell and Deputy Simon Coveney, at the invitation of Christian Aid. The experience of witnessing on the ground the lived reality of the Palestinian people even for a moment was instructive. We were the victims of the capricious arrogance of some of the soldiers and security guards at the crossings although others among them were decent, humane and friendly.

One of the points I would make is that forcing young people into these situations and encouraging them to treat without respect their fellow humans is a violation of their moral spirit and a degradation of everything for which the state of Israel stood in the past and should continue to stand for. How easy is the slide into moral chaos. At the Erez checkpoint on the way into Gaza, one of the young Israeli soldiers, otherwise a pleasant lad, remarked: "I don't know why you are going in there. It is full of Arabs." It was just a casual remark and the true and awful significance only dawned on me later upon reflection. I doubt it would ever dawn on that soldier.

The Gaza Strip is a pathetic little rasher of land surrounded on three sides by Israel. It is further subdivided into three by Israeli military installations at crossing points. These can be used to isolate each separate area at the discretion of the occupying forces. There are also 16 Israeli settlements controlling 14% of the land mass. Most of the coastal fishermen are so severely restricted by the Israeli marine authorities that they cannot fish. There is 62% unemployment, the average industrial wage is less than 10% of that of Israel, 80% of the people live beneath the poverty level while 40% of the children are undernourished and anaemic. Water resources for the area are depleted by artesian wells bored within illegal settlements which export water to the irrigation projects in the Negev Desert.

In Gaza we witnessed the wholesale destruction of houses for strategic purposes, the laying waste of farm lands, bulldozing of greenhouses and farmers corralled behind electric fences watching impotently as their crops rotted on the trees. We managed to get caught in one of the arbitrary Israeli closures that take place even within the Palestinian territory while a gun battle was fought out over our heads. Although frightening I was glad that we had the opportunity to experience some of the lived daily reality of the civilians within the Gaza area. When we visited a local school, on the headmistress's desk there was an array of shell casings and ash trays full of spent bullets. These are the everyday playthings of the children in the school yard The drawings of young children from six to 18 show the same horrifying vividly caught images of dismembered bodies, rockets appearing from the sky blowing the roofs off buildings, injuring and maiming women and children. Nor can this be discounted as propaganda. As the Bible tells us, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings shall come forth truth", and this is what these children live with. Where will they be in ten years time if not in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda or something even worse?

On the coastal strip we met a fisherman and his wife with eight children living in tiny Soweto-like cramped conditions, the smell of sewage heavy even in the primitive kitchen. This is how people live there. Yet in these awful circumstances they retain their dignity, cleanliness and courteous hospitality. One must be careful not to blame the Israelis entirely for this because in many cases poor conditions existed before the Israeli occupation. However, it was partly as a result of Israeli action that work on the sewage ponds was halted so that now on the outskirts of Gaza city people live literally in their own excrement. Children are affected by bronchial asthma and upper respiratory tract infections and this is something for which Israel, the European Union — which started the project but lacked the guts to finish it — and the Palestinian Authority, whose corrupt practices helped to syphon money away from the project, all have a responsibility. To all of them it is a moral reproach. I would like in particular to ask if the Government during its Presidency of Europe could not at least do something about the situation by providing decent sanitary arrangements or at least stopping the overflow of raw sewerage.

At Qualqilya, the wall bites deep into the heart of Palestinian territory to throw a cement noose complete with hostile machine gun posts and one functioning exit to surround tens of thousands of Palestinians. This used to be a positive interface between Israel and Palestine and there were many joint enterprise businesses. They are all in the process of collapse, co-operation being replaced by antagonism. The go-ahead young mayor of this important urban region is being undermined by constant harassment from the Israeli side, while the extreme elements find the discontent so caused to be fertile ground for recruitment.

On this occasion we also visited a small mountain village called Jayyus. While there we met a group of farmers. One of the officials told me that one of these old men of the soil who had not wept at his son's funeral had to turn away as he was describing to an interviewer what was happening to his farmland — as his eyes filled up with tears and he was ashamed. Love of the land is something with which we in Ireland can empathise.

I promised these people at the least that I would tell their story through the Irish Parliament to its people and let it stand upon the record. The first man, through an interpreter, told me how on 30 November last his nine year old daughter became seriously ill. He brought her to the gate so that she could visit a doctor to get treatment. He talked to the soldiers. They said that orders were not to open the gate even at the advertised opening times on that particular day — bear in mind this is not a border, it is people imprisoned deep within their own territory. He was told that the keys were with a roving military vehicle. He ran over to the car which swerved to avoid him but which would not stop. He waited for the authorities. A military car arrived, stopped 20 metres from him and now the girl had a very high fever. They telephoned the doctors and one came, but when he wanted to give the girl an injection through the fence he was prevented, so he threw over a box of tablets instead. Luckily she survived.

A second man similarly had a son, four years old, who was very sick. There were many people waiting at the gate. Soldiers pushed them back. He waited 15 minutes, but again was refused permission to let the car through. Soldiers told him to carry the child but it was too far. He said, "The boy will die". To this the soldiers replied that they did not care. He then laid the child on the ground in front of the vehicle and said: "This is my son. It is your fault if he dies. If he does die I will kill you." After an hour and a half they eventually allowed him to take the child through. The child luckily survived.

A third farmer told of 43 students going to school the previous day. It started raining at about 12 o'clock. The children were kept waiting in the rain for one and a half hours. The children even touched the electric fence to try and draw attention to their plight, but nobody came. Eventually a guard arrived and after another 20 minutes they were allowed through. This happens virtually every day when there are instances of police chasing and firing at Palestinians.

One well established farmer we met in the previous village took us to the fence so that we could see his incubators. Some 4,000 chicks died in one day and 7,000 on another day because they are not allowed to visit the plant to see to essentials such as food, water and heat. Now his brother lives in a shed on the premises at risk of his life.

During our brief visit we had a meeting with some Irish Jewish families who have chosen to make their life in Israel. The response to our visit was quite mixed, some being actively hostile. One of the most interesting guests was not Irish, but married to a Cork man. She was from Bratislava originally and carried the terrible tell-tale mark of a tattoo number from Auschwitz on her wrist. She told us that when she was sent to Auschwitz she was selected by the infamous Dr. Mengele who tapped her with his riding crop, brought her forward and said to her: "But you are not Jewish. You are too beautiful with your blond hair and blue eyes." She, however, confirmed that she was Jewish. He then asked her age and she replied, "13". With a subdued but powerful emphasis he said into her ear: "You are not 13, you are 16, repeat this after me, 'I am 16 years old' and if anybody asks you your age, you say you are 16," and she did. This was how she escaped when all the children under 16 were gassed.

She told me that every time there is a bomb in Jerusalem she has nightmares. She sees again the camps, the dogs and the brutal Gestapo officers. She also said she sympathised with the plight of the Arabs but, she said, "What are we to do? We only want to live."

It is very difficult to respond in the light of such testimony. As a Christian one can only be humbled and shamed by what was inflicted upon such innocent decent people. However, I would also have to ask: would her nightmares not have been worse if she had come with us and seen the wall and the ghetto, for such it is, that has been created by Jewish people into which they have put their Semitic cousins, the Palestinians? If she had seen the concrete watch towers and automatic machine gun emplacements, the guards, the uniforms and the dogs, could she have borne it? I believe this is one of the problems in Israel, that many decent people cannot confront what is being done in their name by the Sharon Government and some of its predecessors because if they did, their whole moral universe would collapse.

The Israeli Government collaborates with them in their blindness. I gave an example the other day of the wall at Tulkarm which is four storeys high and of grey concrete from the Israeli side. It looks like and is felt by most Israeli civilians to be a noise barrier. With regard to the infamous wall, few people who have the experience of driving along its course could accept this primary function of security. If it was it would be along the green line, the 1967 border. It reaches insidiously into Palestinian territory which is already sprinkled with spots and looks, on the map, like it had an attack of measles.

Presently under construction, apparently with the collaboration of firms with connections to Irish companies such as Cement Roadstone Holdings, the wall when finished will have a devastating impact on about 60 towns, villages and refugee camps. I regard any such collaboration by Irish companies as infamous, shameful and indefensible and I call upon Cement Roadstone to investigate the situation and take immediate steps to disinfect itself from such a reprehensible undertaking. I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for his indulgence. I will complete my contribution at the end of the debate.