Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for all of his work on this issue and visits to the region. His understanding of the complex nature of the issue is beyond question. He has a good grasp of the problems facing the Palestinian people when it comes to the settlements, the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In 1980 Ireland was the first state to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state. We were on our own; nobody else supported us as nobody had thought of it at the time. We were seen to be ahead of the European Union and everybody else in the world in leading the way. When Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States, there were 40,000 illegal settlers on the West Bank; today, there are nearly 500,000.

I commend the Minister on the issue of having a port, but such access could end at any time. We have been talking about improving conditions the prisoners when they should not be prisoners at all. They should be released from captivity in the Holy Land. The Knesset is putting a Bill through which provides for full annexation of the settlements to be recognised. Does that sound like that anybody is trying to make things better? I know the work the Minister is doing on the issue of a port, scholarships and the solar energy project. I was in Washington the last time the Gaza Strip was attacked. There was the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel and the consequent response was the levelling of every piece of infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Water pumps, sewage treatment plants, factories, schools, and hospitals were levelled and that is what will happen again.

I note the point the Minister made about the politics of the issue, but the practicalities are a peace process has four fundamental elements. It needs stalemate on both sides, but that is not happening. It needs an independent outside actor. The European Union will not even invoke its own human rights clause in Article 4 of the Euro-Mediterranean agreement with Israel. Why does it not do so and state there has been a breach of human rights? Will the Minister answer that question? Another fundamental point is that in a peace process there is a need to ensure there are no third parties acting as outside agitators. Of course, that is what is happening. The timing also needs to be correct. None of the four elements required in a peace process is present in the Middle East. We had all four at the time of the Good Friday Agreement 20 years ago. None of them is present in Israel.

What the Minister is asking us to do is to seek to improve the conditions for people in the Gaza Strip at a time when conditions are getting exponentially worse by the day. The Oslo Accords, for anyone who knows the details, were a disastrous solution. Almost 40% would not be controlled by the Palestinian people, but that would be much better than what they are experiencing. We have letters from the Knesset. I remember Arab Palestinian Members of the Knesset asking us to put this Bill through. They are on the ground and asking for something to be done because something is a lot better than nothing.