Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A Chathaoirligh, cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire go dtí an díospóireacht thábhachtach seo. I welcome the Minister and extend a particular welcome to the Palestinian ambassador, H.E. Ahmad Abdelrazek, and to Dr. Barghouti, who are with us in the Visitors Gallery.

I want to commend the Senators who have brought forward this extremely important legislation in their Private Members' slot. Like Senator Boyhan, I also want to thank all the Irish NGOs and organisations that have worked hard in helping to support this Bill.

I want to reference a vote in the Danish Parliament just last week in regard to a very similar Bill where all of the parties in the Danish Parliament, bar a far-right party, voted to boycott products from illegal Israeli settlements. Given the only party to vote against that Bill was a far-right party, Senator Mark Daly might want to reflect on that.

This Bill has a noble and just aim. It seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories. It is not extreme. It only seeks to establish a legal framework to ban these imports from settlements which are already illegal under international humanitarian law and, most importantly, domestic Irish law.Goods and services that are only available because of gross human rights abuses and violations of international law should not be available in Ireland. Allowing such goods and services to be freely available in this State both turns a blind eye to deep human suffering and supports such illegal settlements economically. The Bill carefully recognises that the issue of whether territory is illegally occupied is a complex and contentious one. Section 3 of the Bill is drafted specifically to take this into account. Therefore, this Bill only applies to territories where there is clear international legal consensus on the status of the occupation. It also provides the option to add extra territories beyond this, provided there is agreement between the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and both Houses of the Oireachtas.

A clear example of how this Bill would work is by stopping goods and services from illegal Israeli colonial settlements from entering Ireland. Israel's occupation of Palestine since 1967 has created a litany of human rights abuses and war crimes. Not only has Israel used its military to enforce its brutal occupation, it has facilitated the illegal transfer of 600,000 colonial settlers to occupy Palestine. This is a major - many would contest it is the major - road block to reaching a peaceful two-state solution, as the Minister outlined. Israel is also imposing an apartheid regime in occupied Palestine. The Minister rightly said that he and the Irish Government aspire to a "two-state solution that is fair to both sides". There is nothing fair about what is currently happening to the Palestinian people.

The unjust and apartheid regime that Israel implements in Palestine has once again been brought into the international spotlight because of the arrest of Ms Ahed Tamimi. Ahed is a child. She is just 16 years old. She will turn 17 tomorrow and although I do not know whether I can wish her the happiest of birthdays tomorrow, given her current circumstances, I certainly send my and my party's solidarity to Ahed and her family, and to all those children currently under arrest in Israeli prisons. I hope that will be conveyed by our friends who are here in the Gallery today. As I said, Ahed has been in an Israeli military prison since 19 December. She will remain imprisoned for the length of her trial. What horrendous and grievous crime did this child commit? She simply slapped the face of an Israeli soldier outside her family home in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih, which Israeli illegally occupies.

As I put these words together I reflected on my own memories of being a child with an occupying military on the streets and how it felt when they took one off a school bus, when they emptied one's schoolbag, when they stopped one visiting family on the way to one's grandparents' homes. It is little wonder, and entirely understandable, that Ahed would take the kind of action she did, given-----