Brendan Ryan (Labour)

My party and its spokesperson on foreign affairs believe that the decision taken by the Foreign Ministers of the European Union at the recent Council meeting ranks among the most negative decisions in the history of the EU's relationship with the Middle East. I was depressed, annoyed and angry, and remain so, at this capacity to lecture victims of oppression about the need to reject violence, even as their oppressors buy arms and a blind eye is turned to their appalling activities.

The injustices in the Palestinian area would not have justified the killing of a single person. While I do not wish to get involved in a silly what-if debate, it is worth noting that for every Israeli who has died in the intifada, two Palestinians have died. It is difficult for western Europe to have any credibility when it tells the Palestinian Government that uniquely among governments of the world it must reject violence under all circumstances. The international community has not made rejecting violence in all circumstances a condition of dealing with any other government. I defy the Minister to tell me of another situation in which such an instruction has been issued to any government.

The Palestinian Government must operate within the bounds of international law and morality and avoid genocide, etc., but that is not what we told Hamas. We told a government, elected according to what everyone accepts was a fair and free democratic process, that it must "reject violence". I wish every government in the world would reject violence. Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East and has the capacity to obliterate the cities of every country that threatens it, yet we have told its neighbour's newly-elected Government that it must unequivocally reject violence within fewer than four months.

This contrasts with the timescale of our peace process. In 1994 our Government had only one condition, namely, a permanent ceasefire. I often discussed this with the then Taoiseach, who had wonderful practical insights. The Provisional IRA attempted to fudge this by making it a three, six or nine month ceasefire but the Taoiseach continued to say "No". He did not then demand from it what was accomplished last July, namely, an unequivocal rejection of the use of violence. We have told the democratically-elected Government of Palestine that it must do in four months what we gave the Provisional IRA 11 years to do.

We never asked Sinn Féin or the IRA to recognise formally the legitimacy of this, or the Northern, state, which they have denied for 80 years. We sought a ceasefire to create the space into which we knew political compromise would draw them, and out of which would come the recognition of the realities on the ground — it is rare that I quote President George W. Bush.

We did not tell them they must recognise existing treaties, agreements, states, judiciaries and police forces. We continue to allow them progress into the political process in Northern Ireland and ask them to recognise the police force there. We have told the Palestinian people they have made the wrong choice and tough as it is they must recognise a state they do not recognise before we will talk to them, and that they must reject all violence, no matter what Israel does to them, even when it launches a rocket allegedly to kill a terrorist activist, which killed a 15 year old girl who happened to be in the car. Israel did this immediately after the Palestinian election.

I have no time for what-if debates. Killing one person never justifies killing another but we are dealing with a world where people believe that. If we want to achieve political progress we must see it through the eyes of those involved. How can I say to a Palestinian that he or she must reject violence under every circumstance and observe all these agreements but Israel is free to break them? It has broken the Oslo Accord, ignored many parts of the roadmap and international law, and has breached basic human rights conventions. That does not justify any act of violence by anybody else but it creates the context in which matters should be judged.

That is why it was such a dreadful decision on the part of the European Union to mimic what the United States, an ally of Israel, has done. The European Union could have been an independent player and told Hamas it wanted an unequivocal ceasefire and asked it to commit itself to not resorting to violence against Israel on Israeli territory. While I would not justify it morally, international law would probably justify the use of violence by Palestinians against Israeli occupying forces in the West Bank. It would be morally wrong and politically inept but not illegal.

We will not say that. We will tell the Palestinians we expect them to behave to a higher standard than we expect from their oppressors. No sane country can expect any other outcome from that. Had we done this in 1994, or had the British Government announced that, although the IRA was on ceasefire, it was sending the British army into every strong republican area in Northern Ireland to search out weapons and deal with alleged terrorists, while lecturing the IRA about remaining on ceasefire, we would all, across the political spectrum, have said that is not the way to go.

I am astonished that a Government that, by and large, has been sure-footed about the issue of the Middle East and has established a proud position for Ireland, appears to have ultimately capitulated to a particularly short-sighted international response to something that did not happen. It is easy to say they only voted for Hamas because the others were corrupt. That was a serious issue in an appallingly impoverished territory. People who suffered from permanent mass unemployment saw people who happened to be senior members of the Palestinian Authority living in a level of luxury and practising a scale of corruption that was an insult to their own people. That happened and prominent Palestinians from the PLO and Fatah noticed it, spoke about it and denounced it but could not prevent it. That is not a minor issue. That is the sort of issue that annoys people, and somebody delivered for them.

I frequently ask people, including those from a number of other European countries whom I have met since, what they expect to happen now. I ask them if they believe Hamas will lean over backwards and recognise the right of Israel to exist and acknowledge all the treaties because the Palestinians are impoverished. They will say the exact opposite and if another election is forced on them, Hamas will get an even bigger majority. That is the inevitable consequence of every attempt to repress people and use this sort of excessive and brutal force. We should have demanded from Hamas an unequivocal, absolute ceasefire in terms of any attacks on Israel. If we had asked for that we would have some moral authority to criticise it for its inept attempt to justify an horrific car bombing.

If we are to have any credibility we must consider what we intend to do to put some pressure on the other half of the conflict to end illegal settlements. We are fudging the question. There are no legal settlements on the West Bank. Every Israeli settlement on the West Bank is illegal and anybody wanting to negotiate a solution is entitled to expect that all those settlements will end. As my party spokesman said previously, the decision earlier this month was perhaps the most politically inept and potentially disastrous decision the European Union has made in many years in dealing with a sensitive foreign policy issue.