Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Others have outlined what the Amnesty report tells us, which is how systematic the measures are, what the dismantling of equality looks like, and what the crowding out of the space for a population within a territory means. We come into this House, again and again, when we see attacks on Gaza and the West Bank and when we see another round of bombings but what has happened in between is so important. While the world has continued to not act on Israel's breach of international human rights and humanitarian law, while we have continued to play a long waiting game of occasionally expressed disapproval, we have seen a culture of impunity build up. That has reached a level now where evictions are happening almost daily in East Jerusalem.

Over the past few days, we have seen coverage of the conflict in Ukraine and it has been so difficult to watch. We will discuss that following this debate. We have seen those who are standing up against occupation in Ukraine. We have seen those taking defiant steps and have talked about the children standing up on the fences but what we have seen in Palestine, with the Palestinian people, is decade after decade, generations in a row having to come up again and again to demand their rights. Children have died. Last year was the worst in a decade in terms of the number of Palestinian children killed. Just this week I read of the arrest of a 12-year-old, and of a nine-year-old being hit by Israeli forces in the context of forced evictions. Those children are part of yet another generation and I have seen four or five generations come through. They continue to put their trust in international law, international institutions, multilateralism and the idea that there might be a politics of principle at play in this world.They do that despite being failed and being given breadcrumbs from the table of justice. A trail of breadcrumbs has repeatedly led them through new UN processes, structures and resolutions, yet action is not taken. It is a miracle of hope, humanity and trust in the world that Palestinians are again pointing to the politics of principle. Having pointed to all of the breaches of humanitarian law and to war crimes, they are also now pointing to the crime of apartheid as defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and to the fact that, again, this is systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another that is committed with the intent of maintaining the regime. I refer specifically to the reference in the article to "murder", "deportation or forcible transfer of population" and "persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity". This is the crime and people have pointed to yet another piece. It is another marker for why we should act.

In the minute remaining, I will focus on how we can act, not whether this is another level of crime because it is.