Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I am tempted to vote against the resolution because of the provocative nature of assumptions made with regard to use of phosphorus in statements about schools being bombed, which now are admitted not to have been bombed, but broadly because the motion calls for a two-state solution I will reluctantly support it.

I want to talk about the wider hinterland of the Israeli question that involves us in Ireland and in Europe, as it affects the increasingly large and militant Muslim minorities in Europe, and the impact it will have on European politics. In particular I want to talk about the sinister shift in European opinion away from supporting a democratic state and a benign gaze being turned to what by any standard is a gangster organisation, namely, Hamas, the equivalent of the continuity IRA or the real IRA in Palestinian terms. Fatah has been noticeably silent, failed to give it any support and did as little as possible because Fatah knows, as we know in Ireland, that those in Hamas are fundamentalist and barbaric extremists who are no help to their people.

The Jewish state, which is smaller than Munster, is surrounded by a hostile Arab land mass the size of the continental United States and has not known peace in 60 years. If Israel were any other small democratic state, surrounded by a ring of repressive states intent on its destruction, it would be supported by the people and Parliament of Ireland, as it was before the Irish left succeeded in polluting public opinion.

I gave Senator Norris order and I ask him to allow me to speak.