David Norris (Independent)

I would like to thank the Minister and the Minister of State and all my colleagues who took part in what was a very important debate. I have not changed my position. I continue to state where I stand, fully in support of the human rights of ordinary people on both sides. When the state of Israel violates those human rights I will speak out and hope I will be heard. With regard to the business of settlements and Mr. Sharon, we must be very careful. I travelled down there with a very reputable Jewish scholar who has written extensively on this subject and he predicted Sharon's actions two weeks ago saying: "This is exactly what Sharon will do. It is a bargaining ploy. Be careful."

Every settlement is illegal under the United Nations. Why should one, two, three or four be allowed? The position is unsustainable and half the time in these so-called settlements there is nobody, just empty buildings. The other matter is the point raised by Senator Henry — the demographics. Sharon knows perfectly well there are elements within the Palestinian side, for example, who will now say: "Let us give up. Surrender is the best form of attack. Let us say we cannot have a state; it does not work. We will all go in with Israel." Then Israel is overwhelmed because it is faced with the problem of whether it becomes totally dictatorial or whether Israelis recognise the Palestinians and become a minority in their own Jewish state. That is the problem Sharon faces, so we must be careful with him because of the cosmetic arrangements he makes.

We have a powerful weapon in the European Union, the association agreement with Israel, which is a trade consensus. That is where it bites and that is where it will hurt. There are human rights protocols attached and I believe there is a strong case for activating them. With regard to the suicide bombings I am not going to go over that. I have said what I had to say apart from this: I know when that woman, a beautiful young lawyer, killed herself, awful as that deed was it is not enough just to condemn it. One has to ask why these abnormal events happen. How is it that a young woman with a law degree and her life in front of her commits such an act? We must ask why, not to excuse it, but to delve into the reasons. When one asks this question, one discovers that her brother and her cousin were shot in front of her and her father, when dying of cancer, was refused palliative treatment. He was stopped all the time at the gate. She watched him die in agony. I am not excusing her act, but putting it into context.

As a former academic, I believe there should be a comparative review of sentencing policy in the jurisdiction of Israel as between Jewish and Arab citizens. There is a discrepancy and it is a reproach to the Israeli bar council that it has done nothing about. I would like to return to the business of the wall. Some 220,000 people are affected directly, representing a third of the population of Palestine. On visiting this region, both sides have a tendency to ask what lessons we can show them from our experience in Northern Ireland. The parallel is salutary — four hundred years after the plantation of Ulster, we are still dealing with its malignant consequences. At least now we have learned and there is progress. One reason for this is the doctrine of parity of esteem, which has not been accepted by the contending parties, especially the Israelis, whose government appears to have declared war, not on a state, but on its people and whose proud boast of having made the desert bloom has now been replaced in the territories by the horrible reality of turning orchards and olive groves back into desert.

If one takes the parallel with the North seriously and tries to imagine the Israeli-Palestinian situation and its conditions being re-enacted north of the Border, this would involve the bombing of the Divis Flats by F-16 aircraft every time a machine gun poked out of a window, the surrounding of Dundalk by a concrete noose and its isolation from the rest of the Republic, with all the attendant restrictions on its population and the demolition of half of west Belfast because of supposed IRA contact. It would be much better if, instead of attempting to degrade the Palestinian population further, the Israeli Government made every attempt to bring them up to the level of infrastructure, income and employment that used to be enjoyed before the intifada in the state of Israel.

Mr. Sharon frequently says the problem with the process is there is no partner. This tends to refer to Mr. Arafat. However, the absence of partnership could equally be laid at his door. On any occasion when there was a possibility of peace breaking out, Mr. Sharon was careful to sabotage it by a target assassination which frequently went wrong and caused multiple civilian casualties. After the recent suicide bombing, which was widely and rightly condemned, an Israeli Government spokesman, Mr. Gissin said: "The rest of the world should now sit back and let us do as we need to do to defend ourselves."

I sincerely hope this advice is not heeded and is smartly rejected. There could be no better recipe for disaster. Let us recall what happened when Mr. Sharon infamously stood back and let the Christian militia in to butcher the unfortunate Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila. It is wise, also, to be careful of repeated and quite dishonest calls made by Mr. Sharon on the Palestinian Authority to disarm Hamas. Let us recall that Hamas was established with the assistance of covert Israeli funding as an early means of destabilising the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In so doing, they sowed dragons teeth. Is it reasonable to expect a police force whose police stations have been repeatedly bombed and whose personnel are forbidden by the Israeli occupiers to carry weapons or even wear uniforms in directing traffic to confront armed radical elements? As I said on RTE recently, it is like expecting them to go out in their underpants and peg snowballs at heavily armed fanatics.

If there is to be a resolution of this terrible conflict in the medium term, positive steps, however small, as the Minister of State said, need to be initiated now. During the week, I attended a talk by the Cypriot Foreign Minister in the Institute of European Affairs. Speaking on the Cyprus problem, he said that in order to make progress both sides must cut their losses, turn the page and develop a new vocabulary. This is the best advice I could give to both sides in the continuing tragic dispute in Palestine-Israel.

Finally, I thank Christian Aid for making this trip possible and to say that if I learned anything it is the necessity for people of conscience, be they Israeli, Palestinian, Arab or Irish to travel through these hot spots and bear witness to what is happening so that the worst excesses may be stopped. I also ask in particular that the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, and the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Kitt, keep this matter close to the top of the agenda during the Irish Presidency and make a point of visiting not just Jerusalem but also Ramallah, the terrible trajectory of the wall and the squalid militarised conditions that now exist in the West Bank and Gaza.