Seanad debates

Wednesday, 5 July 2006

5:00 pm

Photo of Brendan RyanBrendan Ryan (Labour)

I assure the Senator that I am still an independent at heart with a very free spirit.

I am glad to have the opportunity presented by this motion to speak on this issue. I want to talk calmly about it, but I am not sure I will because what is happening currently in the illegally occupied territories in Palestine is an event of horrific brutality. I want to get through all of what are now apparently the expected ritual condemnations and to say that of course violence is wrong and unnecessary. Of course the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped and captured should be treated properly and released. The reason he is not mentioned in the motion is that I could not know last Thursday, when I was required to draft the motion to facilitate the Government, what the position would be today. Therefore, I was not in a position to deal with that in the motion.

Last May, Christian Aid issued us all with a warning, which carries the heading, "Isolated and denied aid, Palestinian society faces collapse". Christian Aid addressed the situation that had developed and that was at that stage gradually getting worse. It has now developed out of all proportion and got even worse because of the responses to the democratic choice made by the people of the occupied territories to elect a government of which the Western powers do not approve. The point made by Christian Aid in its submission was that Hamas and the Hamas-led Government were being treated with a display of international isolation that no democratically elected Government in the world had ever before been subjected to. Nobody has ever done this on the scale that is currently being done to a Government that was democratically elected. This is a western world that uses wonderful rhetorical language about Israel being the only democratically elected Government in the Middle East. This was supposed to serve as a reason for giving Israel some latitude. We then witnessed a democratic election in the Palestinian territories that was conducted according to the best international standards and the immediate isolation of the democratically elected Government.

If an even-handed approach was taken, we could possibly have a debate about it. The EU has consistently called for Israel to desist from any action, such as settlement activities and the construction of a separation barrier on the Palestinian side. There has been a succession of such calls from the EU and sometimes from the US Government, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Every one of these calls has been ignored and no action in terms of trade, aid or cultural isolation has been taken against successive Israeli Governments which have ignored the will of the international community. One can contrast this with what has been done to the Government and people of the Palestinian territories since then.

Last May, Christian Aid spoke about the possible collapse of the public health service system in Palestine, which was identified by the World Health Organisation. Since then, the Israeli Government has chosen to steal the tax revenues of the democratically elected Government of the Palestinian territories and claim that it has some right to them. The international community has stood back and apparently approved this action. Sadly, with Ireland's full compliance, the EU joined in that international campaign of isolation. This was bad enough. It was then followed by an armed attack by a few armed groups from Gaza on an Israeli tank in which people from both sides were killed. I believe this action to have been morally questionable because of a position I have long adopted on the use of violence. However, can someone tell me under which tenet of international law is it illegal for the people of an occupied land to resist by military force the army that is occupying them? Where is it written down in international law that armed resistance to an occupation is illegal or against international law? I want to hear such an assertion by an Irish Government because this is what we are being told. I believe the use of violence in these kind of situations has no moral basis but the fact that I believe it is immoral does not mean that there is something in international law outlawing it because there is no such provision.

This issue is separate from assaults on civilians, which are always wrong. It is Jesuitical in the extreme to distinguish between deliberately targeting civilians and indifferently taking the risk that civilians will be killed so that one can target what one believes to be a military target. Such a distinction does not exist in Irish law. If someone committed an act of terrorist violence which accidentally killed civilians, he or she would be charged with murder even if he or she swore in court that he or she did not intend to kill anyone, that there was to have been a warning and that the bomb went off unexpectedly. Such a person would still be charged with murder because he or she recklessly and indifferently put the lives of innocent people at risk. Such an action is fundamentally no different from the deliberate targeting of civilians. Both types of action are morally wrong and it is time we rediscovered a conscience.

We should remember that the 1967 invasion of the occupied territories was and is illegal and has been condemned as such by every international body. We should remember that a succession of uprisings of varying levels of intensity have followed on from this illegal occupation. I witnessed the first intifada, which was horrible enough at that stage. I cannot imagine what it is like at the moment.

An extraordinary and brutal assault followed the assault on the military target by an armed resistance group and resulted in the destruction of a power station, bridges and roads and, ultimately, in the kidnapping of a large section of the Government of the Palestinian territories and the elected representatives of its people. It is extraordinary the way nobody calls this kidnapping. On the contrary, it is called capture, detention or some other word. Apparently, the only kidnapping that has taken place in the last month in the occupied territories is the alleged kidnapping or capture of an Israeli soldier. Have the many hundreds of people from the occupied territories who have been placed in long-term detention by Israel been kidnapped or captured? What is their status? They are ignored. This leads on to the fundamental question regarding this issue. It is not a question of taking sides and supporting one form of violence. It is the profound need to reassert our position as even-handed supporters of non-violent resolution of conflict. We have moved into a position whereby we support the use of non-violence by people on the receiving end of violence and ignore the use of organised state violence by those in positions of power who possess the military equipment to carry out such violence.

If any state other than the state of Israel had done what it has done to a neighbouring country over the last couple of weeks, this country would have led the charge of denunciation and the request for sanctions and immediate action to bring such activity to a halt. I am profoundly disappointed that we have walked ourselves into an alliance with the EU and the US which has told the elected Government of the Palestinian territories that it must do what they have told it to do.

When a ceasefire was declared by the IRA in 1994, we asked only that it be a permanent ceasefire. We did not tell Sinn Féin that first it had to recognise the legitimacy of Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. We knew it would eventually be forced to do so but we did not start from this position. We did not ask it to do anything other than cease violence. We need to do two things about the Israel-Palestine conflict. We must tell the Israeli Government to immediately release the elected representatives and Government of the people of Palestine. The release of the Israeli soldier must be organised if for no other reason than that it is the correct and humane thing to do. The international community must then be prepared to tell both sides in this conflict that if they do not observe its wishes and views, it will take even-handed action against all those who will not observe its views. A one-sided version of morality, legality and condemnation of violence does no more than feed the particular views of some of those involved in fomenting violence, particularly on the Palestinian side.

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