Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a fair bit of the conference being held next door by Sadaka today. The theme is dismantling Israeli apartheid and developing Ireland's strategy. The keynote speaker was Michael Lynk, who is the UN special rapporteur on human rights for the occupied territories. He has written six reports and he was absolutely clear today that Israel is an apartheid state. In making that statement, he joined not only Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch but 450 human rights organisations across the world. He set out very clearly the legal case proving the statement to be true. As part of his presentation, he shared some quotes from Israeli politicians. I thought it would be good to share them with colleagues here today. I will start with the current Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett. He says: "I oppose a Palestinian state, and I am making it impossible to conduct diplomatic negotiations that might lead to a Palestinian state." Israel's current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yair Lapid, is due to take over as Prime Minister in 18 months. This is an interesting quote from him: "My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians". That is pretty clear, is it not? I should not even need to bother with this quote from Benjamin Netanyahu.