Good morning. I am honoured to address the esteemed parliamentary committee and am grateful for this opportunity to share with members a glimpse of the Palestinian people's existence, resistance and inextinguishable insistence on freedom and self-determination after 70 years of colonial oppression. Like all Palestinians, I feel more at home in Ireland than in any other western country. Its heroic struggle against centuries of colonialism has always inspired Palestinians. This is why I shall speak from the heart.
At a time when Israel's regime of military occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid is implementing a shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy against peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza marching for freedom and refugee rights, charitable rhetoric is not enough. It is time for accountability. The EU still votes as a bloc in support of UN resolutions upholding basic Palestinian rights, including the right of return, and condemning Israel's settlements as illegal, but it has yet to take effective measures of accountability against Israel. In contrast, significant EU sanctions were imposed on Russia soon after its military takeover of the Crimea.
Despite Israel's descent into unmasked, right-wing extremism, particularly with the current escalation of its repression, and notwithstanding the EU's rhetoric, the Union, including Ireland, remains largely complicit in enabling and maintaining Israel's grave violations of Palestinian human rights. Israel's serious breaches of international law trigger legal obligations for the EU, Israel's largest trade partner, and its member states. As reiterated in the 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice, ICJ, states must refrain from any act that would entail recognition of Israel's settlement enterprise and from providing any form of assistance that maintains the illegal situation arising from it. By trading with Israel's illegal settlements and supporting companies that are involved in the settlement enterprise, as defined by the UN, the EU is violating both obligations of non-recognition and non-assistance.
The EU, including Ireland, maintains a web of military relations, weapons research, banking transactions and settlement trade with Israeli companies, banks and institutions that are deeply implicated in violating our rights. For example, the EU imports goods from the Israeli settlements at an estimated annual value of $300 million. Through its Horizon 2020 research programme, the EU has approved more than 200 projects with Israeli companies, such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, that are accused of deep complicity in war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Another Israeli beneficiary of EU funding is Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, a main hub for developing Israeli weapon systems used to perpetrate crimes against Palestinian civilians. Merely labelling some of the illegal products of Israeli colonies instead of banning them is considered by Palestinians as yet another EU failure to uphold European and international law.
As Israel's regime becomes more overtly associated with the global far right, including white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups in the United States and Europe, and as it becomes the model for Trump's xenophobic policies, its popularity continues to sink. A recent BBC poll shows that Israel has the fourth lowest popularity rating among many countries. Crucially, support for holding Israel to account is growing among Jewish Americans and the broader US public.
Israel is intensifying its land-grabbing construction of illegal settlements and walls in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. It is tightening its fatal siege of 2 million people in Gaza, denying them basic necessities while counting the per capita calories that are allowed in. The UN predicts that Gaza will be unlivable by 2020. Israel is entrenching what even the US Department of State once characterised as a system of "Institutional, legal, and societal discrimination" against Palestinian citizens of present day Israel, enforced by more than 65 racist laws. It also continues to deny the internationally recognised rights of Palestinians in exile, who account for 50% of all Palestinians.
In light of this ongoing Nakba, and given the failure of the international community to hold Israel to account, the non-violent, Nobel Peace Prize nominated Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, BDS, movement for Palestinian rights was launched in 2005 by the broadest coalition in Palestinian civil society. It calls for an end to the 1967 occupation, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, BDS has consistently and categorically opposed all forms of racism and discrimination, including anti-Semitism, anti-black racism and Islamophobia. We uphold that one's identity should never diminish one's entitlement to rights. The BDS movement is supported by a near consensus in Palestinian society. Days ago, the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, which is the sole legitimate representative of our people, reiterated its support for BDS.
At the most basic level, Palestinians are calling on Ireland, the EU and the world at large to uphold their profound moral and legal responsibility to do no harm to us. Beyond responsibility, we are asking for solidarity, not charity. In a show of effective and genuine Irish solidarity with the Palestinian struggle a few weeks ago, Dublin became the first European capital to adopt BDS for Palestinian rights. Derry was the first Irish city, in 2016, to endorse BDS. The Irish trade union movement, the student movement, artists and academics across Ireland have adopted BDS in support of Palestinian rights.
In response to the impressive growth of support for Palestinian rights, particularly through BDS, and evoking memories of McCarthyism, Israel has waged a global war on the movement since 2014, including extensive propaganda, legal warfare and espionage. A desperate Israeli Government Minister has established a "tarnishing unit" to smear Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders in the BDS movement while another has publicly threatened us - my name was mentioned in that threat - with "targeted civil assassination". Amnesty International has condemned these threats. Ireland, along with the EU in general, Sweden, the Netherlands and others, has upheld the right to call for BDS against Israel to achieve Palestinian rights as a matter of freedom of expression.
To fulfil Ireland's obligations under international law vis-à-vis the Palestinian people, we appeal to the committee to consider the following concrete measures of accountability: imposing a two-way military embargo on Israel, as was done against apartheid South Africa and as has been called for by Amnesty International; banning the import of products of companies implicated in Israel's illegal settlement enterprise and ensuring that companies involved in grave misconduct, such as HP and G4S, are excluded from State tendering processes in line with the EU directive on this matter; supporting the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement until Israel abides by its human rights clause; halting all financial transactions with Israeli banks that finance Israel's settlement enterprise; and stop considering the import of Israeli natural gas or electric power, given Israel's pillage of Palestinian energy resources.
Yeats once wrote: "I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." He also wrote: "In dreams begin responsibility". Indeed, in presenting my people's dreams and aspirations before the committee, I sincerely hope that members shall not tread on our dreams of dignity, emancipation and a just peace, but will act with responsibility to make them come true.
