I welcome Mr. Khalil Shaheen and Ms Louise O'Connor.
With the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Deputy Woods, I and others, in a joint delegation of the Joint Committee on European Affairs and the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, visited Gaza in July of last year. I visited Israel earlier in the spring, but we were not able to get into Gaza. I had been to Gaza previously, just two weeks after the Israeli withdrawal and several times through the 1980s.
My first point relates to the work of this committee. We are not here as a kind of clearing house where people fire information into us. The Sub-Committee on Human Rights must at some stage make a recommendation to the Oireachtas joint committee on actions we want taken, and I think there is a consensus around some of these actions. This is an important point to me. Otherwise, we would be just a clearing house for statements.
It is not a matter of balance. First, one must draw a moral conclusion on the humanitarian tragedy that has been described to us in Gaza, as it affects children, women and men. Do you accept it as a humanitarian tragedy and that what is taking place is a form of collective punishment, or do you say that those, because they have certain representatives among them who at different levels may or may not be guilty of releasing rockets, are changed as people who are entitled to basic humanitarian protection? There is no equivocation in that, and you could get chart loads of paper in from each side. There is no balance in that.
This raises a question on some of the fundamentals of human rights and I am very interested in what Mr. Khalil Shaheen has to say on it. I am not clear, as I listen to this presentation, and others, on whether people accept the independence of human rights as a perspective. This is a crucial issue, one about which Deputy Callely, as Chairman, and we, as a human rights sub-committee, had better make up our minds. If one does accept it as independent, then one should be able to act on the human rights clause.
For example, the people in Gaza I mentioned are entitled to have their human rights protected, the families in Sderot that we visited are entitled to their human rights although there is a question of proportion that arises on the scale of the loss of life, and the people who are threatened by Hamas within Gaza are entitled to have their human rights respected. In addition, the prisoners in Israeli jails are entitled to have their human rights respected, but so also are the prisoners being held by the Palestinian Authority.
One matter about which I am getting rather weary is that when one speaks at this committee, where we have switched off our mobile phones and we have all respected privilege, we get a barrage of abuse on the basis that we are on one side or whatever. Some of us have a long record in human rights and we are at the end of the road in taking shovel-fulls of propaganda.
If one believes also in human rights, as I stated, that apply separately, over and above every issue we have listed, then one will say that they mean something in the articles in the agreement of the EU, both with Israel and with the Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Khalil Shaheen made reference to the Council's conclusion, item No. 4 in the briefing. We all want all of these measures mentioned in item No. 4 in the briefing, but we also want the agreement before it has deepened, and also that it be tested as to whether, in fact, the parties are in compliance with the human rights standards that are basic to the treaty.
Immediately I say this, I can predict the response, that because we look for human rights compliance in the treaty, we are automatically assumed not to be able to be fair. Those who feel that what they need really is a continual blow of wind in one ear and out the other, must occasionally ask themselves where they stand and if they arrive at a conclusion.
We arrived at conclusions, and the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs published a report on its visit to Gaza. We also held several discussions since. What is in the Goldstone report, for example, identified not a general threat on human welfare but an immediate threat in terms of sanitation and environment that would affect everyone, particularly through contaminated water.
I cannot see how a person can use the words human rights if they say, "Well, it is their own fault." That is what has been said. We looked at houses that were incomplete, and could have been roofed. We listened to presentations by persons whose character was absolutely attacked repeatedly: Mr. John Ging and Colonel Desmond Travers. Colonel Travers, on the Goldstone report, drew attention in a fair and balance way to what no one disputes, namely the immediate need for work on the environment. Mr. Ging, in a balanced way, brought us from one UNRWA project to another.
Summarising what I have said about Gaza and what I have heard, it is wearying if one must be reminded of the degree of the humanitarian tragedy that is present, but what is less ready is the acceptance by the international political community that what is taking place is politically scandalous in every respect of international law.
I do not agree with the briefing document we received, that things are looking up on the fundamental matters. Sadly, I had hoped that Senator Mitchell would have achieved very much more. I had no expectation at all of anything from Mr. Tony Blair's presence in the region. On east Jerusalem, while we were there an eviction took place. On settlements, they are extending. On movement, it is contracting.
Years ago, when Senator Norris and I were in Israel, we met maybe 20 or 30 voluntary organisations in Israel interested in human rights. I go in and out, as an adjunct professor of the Irish Centre for Human Rights and I see what is coming in. It is interesting that, unless one is signing up for the propaganda, if one takes an internationally recognised body of human rights the work that comes from Beth Salem, a human rights institution in Israel itself, is excellent and fair. However, it too is regularly blackened by the propaganda machine. Members of this sub-committee, the joint committee and the Dáil must now make up their minds on whether they want to reach conclusions on these matters.
There are different versions of what we will hear about people who have tried to break the siege, as it is, from one side or the other, and there are issues that arise for the Egyptian Government or whatever. At the end of the day the fact is what happens in the so-called Quartet process is that when the United States blows hot and cold on this particular issue — the game being played at present, incidentally, is to get to the last two years of the US presidency when nothing can be attempted and nothing will be achieved — the vacuum that is created is not filled by the European Union. The European Union has been ready to deepen the agreement without doing as it should, as the Joint Committee on European Affairs asked it to do, namely to be scrupulously fair, take a period of three months, decide whether the agreement is being complied with in terms of human rights, take all the human rights information — I condemn the outrage of a child killed in Sderot in the same way as I would in Gaza, and have — and the facts, examine them, and then decide whether, in fact, instead of deepening the treaty one should cancel it, which is where the evidence tends at present. I am happy to have somebody else decide that independently over a period of three months and report to the General Council, and to have Ireland give a lead, campaign for it, etc.
At the same time, if one is to do this, if one is to make the human rights argument, one must be able to criticise the person who releases a rocket from Gaza in the direction of Sderot. One must be able to demand that you visit not only Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, but also Palestinians in Palestinian jails in the West Bank where — I say this as a human rights activist — the mistreatment learned in another prison is being visited upon inmates. That is the work the committee needs to do. Others may require it but I certainly do not need a new deluge of paper in which a high moral windy position is adopted.
