Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House for this important and necessary debate. I begin by expressing my sympathies and those of my party and our solidarity with all those who have lost their lives, particularly in the days and weeks of this latest series of incidents.

None of us has the time to do justice to the context that is required in a debate such as this. In the limited time afforded to me, I think it is important to lay out some of that context because the events of the past week did not happen without context. We have laid it out in this House with the Minister in this term and the previous one. I do not seek to be reductive but I will provide a snapshot of that context. There is a coloniser and the colonised. There are those who are implementing apartheid and those who suffer that apartheid. There are those who are driving people from their homes and demolishing them and those who become refugees as a result. There are those who build illegal separation walls and those who are forced to live behind them. There are those who break international law and the Geneva Convention and those who are victims of these war crimes. There are those who cry out for international support, solidarity and help and those who bomb the media outlets through which these people try to do so.

The Minister is in possession of this information, having said he had been to Gaza and other places. He then asked Israel to act responsibly. It strikes me that Israel has no desire whatsoever to act responsibly. What this State and states throughout the world need to do is act responsibly in response to the flagrant breaches of international law by Israel and the vast slaughter carried out against the Palestinian people. We should use the UN Security Council seat for practical outcomes, adhere to the will of the Oireachtas and recognise the state of Palestine, and, as other colleagues have said, implement the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018. I do not doubt for one second the sincerity and forthrightness of the Minister's words, be they in this Chamber or the other House, but it is time he moved beyond words and took action because we owe that to the people who, as has rightly been acknowledged, are suffering, enduring and dying as we speak.