David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I hope he listens in detail to what is said because we are going to give him some advice on this situation. I am very glad that the motion put down by my colleague, Senator Henry, refers to how the Government can help. There are many ways it can help in Iraq and Palestine. I will not rehearse all that I have said before. The war is perfectly illegal. We have debated this on many occasions. It has not even achieved its own objectives. We were told it was to make the world safe and remove al-Qaeda but it has spread this infection all over the place. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Americans have violated their own constitution. There was a necessity to demonstrate a clear and present danger but that was not done. There were no weapons of mass destruction. These arguments have all been made.

I am very glad that Senator Henry took up the question of the Gulfstream aeroplane. I have raised this on numerous occasions. I would like the Minister to commit to doing something about it because we are complicit in an international war crime. It did not feature only in The Irish Times from which Senator Henry quoted. There was also a very interesting article in Village identifying the plane as one which has been used by the US Government to transport the victims of kidnapping. I have mentioned this before and I want the Minister to investigate it. The articles states: "On 18 December, 2001 US operatives kidnapped Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed Al-Zery, Egyptian exiles who had requested asylum in Sweden." They were forced on to this aeroplane in Sweden. This is the aircraft that lands frequently in Shannon Airport. The identifying marks have been read out here this evening. The two prisoners had their clothes removed from their bodies with a scissors, a suppository inserted into their anus and diapers placed on them. Their hands and feet were chained to a specially designed harness and they travelled blindfolded and hooded.

Once in detention in Eqypt local interrogators fastened electrodes to the prisoner's genitals, breast nipples, tongue, ear lobes and underarms. There were doctors present to judge how much torture the prisoners could withstand. The exposed parts were anointed, so that there would not be marks and scars and cold water was poured to stop blood clots.

Why has the Garda Síochána not been sent onto that aeroplane? I want that done. This Minister, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Government stand indicted because they cannot say they did not know about this. This is happening. The Garda has the right to go on board. Why is that not happening? We are complicit in war crimes and it is not good enough for the Minister, Deputy Dermot Ahern, to brush it off and say we received €25 million. That does not excuse the use of Shannon Airport for exporting people not to Guantanamo Bay, but to Jordan and Egypt. I would like this investigated very quickly.

Almost all the people involved in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2002 were Saudi Arabian. The Wahabi religion is Saudi Arabian. The money trail led there and the Saudis bombed Iraq. How logical is that? That is the context of the war. If the Minister wants to do any good he can advise the Americans not to bomb Falluja. They are getting ready to do that as we speak. It will be another catastrophic mistake.

I indicated that I would spend most of my time discussing Palestine and I am grateful that Senator Henry suggested I do so. I recommend to the Minister a report by Christian Aid called Facts on the Ground: the end of the two-state solution? There is a parallel abuse of human rights going on in Israel. I am not anti-Semitic. Authority after authority quoted in this document was sourced among Israeli Jewish academics and human rights workers. One could hardly accuse them of being anti-Semitic. There is significant violation of human rights. There are offences against the fourth Geneva Convention, such as collective punishment, the murder of children and indiscriminate bombing.

There is something we can do. In the European Union there is an external association treaty with the state of Israel which has certain human rights provisions attached. These articles require that the agreement be suspended if there are violations. Why does this Government not use its position to try to ensure that human rights actually mean something in Europe, that they are not just paper, that children cannot be murdered wholesale, civilian populations terrorised, and ghettos created, which I have seen in Jerusalem? This is not just my word. It is used by distinguished Israeli Jewish commentators yet for the sake of money we are not prepared to act as we should and make sure that these international instruments are operated in the human rights dimension. That is my second suggestion.

My first suggestion is that this plane be investigated. The second is that we operate the human rights protocols of the external association agreement with Israel. My third suggestion is to place information on the record that has been put in my hands by my former partner, Ezra Yitzhak, about what occurred on 30 September 2004 at 6 a.m. in the village of Twane near South Hebron. Schoolchildren and the Christian and Jewish human rights workers that were accompanying them to try to protect them from the attentions of the illegal settlers were viciously attacked. Two of them, Kim in her forties and Chris in his thirties, both from the US, were attacked and seriously injured. This is a situation we should take to heart. I am prepared to give the Minister the document I have, which is a contemporaneous note from my telephone conversation with Ezra on this issue. This is a situation that should go to our hearts because it is directly parallel to the situation that we all got so worked up about in the Holycross convent in Belfast, yet this is much worse. The Minister will remember that case where the school children were attacked by Protestant paramilitaries. Much worse is happening in Israel and we are doing absolutely nothing about it.

We now have a suggestion that Mr. Sharon will remove some of the settlements. That is a good thing I suppose, but it is a cosmetic exercise. What will be left is a truncated state, surrounded by Israel and completely impotent and ineffective. As Professor Avi Shlaim, a distinguished Israeli commentator, said:

What Mr. Sharon envisages is an emasculated and demilitarised Palestinian entity, built on less than half the land of the Occupied Territories, with Israel in control of its borders, air-space and water resources. This is a recipe for a ghetto, not a free country.

That quote is from an Israeli professor of international law. The illegal settlements, which began in 1967, now contain up to 400,000 settlers. Unfortunately, this was one of the defects of the Oslo agreement. It was corrupt from the beginning as its initial calculations from the maps drawn accepted the plainly illegal settlements. I again quote Professor Shlaim, who is a professor at St. Anthony's College, Oxford:

The subsequent decline of the Oslo peace process was caused more by Israeli territorial expansionism than by Palestinian terrorism. Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Sharon's Government continues to expand, are the root of the problem.

Here again is something that needs to be examined. The whole expropriation is based on a very shaky and corrupt legal process. Professor David Kretzmer, professor of international law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said:

The connection between widening the scope of State land and the settlement policy of the Likud Government is quite explicit; although purporting to preserve the right of the public in State land, such land was regarded as a resource to be used for the resettlement of nationals of the occupying power. This is quite illegal.

I could continue to quote these points, but it would be redundant. I commend this report to the Minister. They do not even count how many children have been killed. There is no investigation of the murder of children. It is just intolerable. Again, no one can say that I am anti-Israeli. The issue of land is something to which we in Ireland can respond. A farmer from Tulkarem, which I have visited, said:

From January you need to fertilize olives, but I was not allowed to get to my olive grove for long enough. Olives need continuous care. Neglect cause weeds to take hold, they get dry and settlers burn them and damage the trees. Last year I could see the destruction, but I could not reach the trees to save them.

Some 3,670 acres of land have been confiscated and 102,320 olive trees destroyed to create the notorious wall.

We must bear in mind those wonderful people who stood up against ethnic cleansing, against apartheid and against the creation of ghettos. We must bear in mind people like Rachel Corrie, who was murdered by the Israeli army, Jamie Miller, an unarmed reporter who was murdered by the Israeli army, and those wonderful Israeli Jewish people who protect human rights. There are people like the Physicians for Human Rights, whose work I have also seen, and my friend Ezra.

I wish to raise three points with the Minister. First, the use of the aeroplane referred to by both Senator Henry and I is part of an international criminal conspiracy and we are now complicit in international war crimes. It is urgent that the Minister ask the Garda to board this plane when it arrives in Shannon. We must investigate the circumstances on board. Second, we must urge our colleagues in Europe to operate the human rights clauses of the external association agreement. Finally, I ask the Minister to take up with the Israeli authorities, through the Israeli ambassador who is a decent man, the situation in the village of Twane in South Hebron, the facts of which I will hand to him before I leave the Chamber this evening.