I have a simple question for the Taoiseach. How many innocent Palestinian civilians - men, women and children - does Israel have to slaughter, how many war crimes does Israel have to commit, and how much death and destruction does Israel have to visit on the people of Gaza and Palestine before the Taoiseach will call for and impose sanctions on Israel, expel the Israeli ambassador from this country and call for the immediate referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes? In front of the world, by its own admission, Israel is committing war crimes. The Israelis have stated so publicly; this is not a matter of opinion. They declared their intention to force, through the threat of military bombardment, more than a million Palestinians - it is now well more than a million - from their homes in northern Gaza and ethnically cleanse them. It is a crime against humanity. The Israelis have stated publicly the intention to deny water, electricity, medicine and life-saving equipment to 2.2 million people. They said so in front of the eyes of the world and they are doing it. Every minute, children are being slaughtered by their artillery and their relentless bombardment of residential complexes, hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure. They just go on and on, and the Taoiseach does nothing. There are words of concern but no action to hold them to account.

These are clearly premeditated war crimes and genocide. There are Jewish people in the United States, Canada and around the world, and in Israel, calling this a genocide. Scholars and academics are saying it is genocidal. An Israeli general has said, "Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction." Yoav Gallant, an Israeli Minister, said, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." He further stated that he had "removed every restriction" on the IDF. Another Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has stated, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." The President of Israel, referring to the people of Gaza, says they are all responsible. Before 7 October, Netanyahu appeared in front of the UN General Assembly with a map of Israel that had removed all references to Palestine. It was a clear declaration of intent to destroy the Palestinian people and steal all their land. A total of 6,000 Palestinians were killed between 2008 and 7 October this year. Thousands of Palestinians are held hostage, without trial, in administrative detention.

The Deputy is over time.

When will the Taoiseach move beyond words of concern, impose sanctions and expel the ambassador of this apartheid, murderous state?

I do not want to see any innocent people being killed in the Middle East, nor do I think the Deputy does. He specifically mentioned Palestinian people. I would extend that to Israeli people, whom he did not mention. Innocent Israeli people should not be killed either, by Hamas or by any Palestinian armed group. Nor should any of our own citizens be killed. Let us not forget one of our own citizens, a joint Irish-Israeli whose mother comes from County Laois and whose family I have spoken to, was killed by Hamas two weeks ago.

We have great fears for Palestinian Irish citizens now living in Gaza that they may be victims in what Israel is doing in Gaza at the moment.

When it comes to sanctions, we always act multilaterally. Individually imposed sanctions are not effective. They would have no benefit for Palestinians and they might even do us a degree of harm. Sanctions are only effective when they are imposed multilaterally, by states acting together.

In relation to the ambassador, we do not have any plans to expel any ambassador. We did not expel the Russian ambassador, and I do not think anyone in this House has been as supportive of Ukraine's battle for freedom as I have been. We took a very particular view that it is important to have some line of communications open, and that is why we have ambassadors. If you expel an ambassador or close an embassy, the only line of communication is minister to minister, or secretary general to secretary general, and that is if you can even get a phone call. We have citizens in Palestine, Israel and Russia and it is important we are able to keep those lines of communication open. It serves nothing to close them. Even countries at war with each other have ambassadors, for that obvious reason.

On what is going on in Gaza, let me be clear. The view of the Irish Government is that collective punishment is wrong, and the innocent civilians and people of Gaza should not be subjected to collective punishment. That is wrong. Hostage-taking is wrong and hostages should be released, and it is not acceptable to target civilian infrastructure. We have been very clear about that all along and will continue to be so, and we will use our voice at European and EU level as much as we can.

While I think the Deputy is entirely sincere in his views and I know he has campaigned on these issues for a very long time, let us not forget what Hamas's objective is as well. Hamas's objective is the destruction of Israel. It is ending the existence of a Jewish state which was established by the UN 75 years ago. It is ending that state, from the river to the sea. Is that not genocide as well?

First, I am horrified by every single death but, you see, the world is responsible for failing to call out the reality of the Israeli regime. It is an apartheid regime. It was set up on the basis of the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. It has sustained itself through the ethnic cleansing - ongoing - of Palestinians day in, day out, in East Jerusalem, across the West Bank, everywhere, everywhere there is Hamas and where there is no Hamas. I lived there at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987 and there was no Hamas. Young people rose up because their entire future had been stolen from them. They were suffering ferocious oppression at the hands of the Israeli regime and military and they rose up. There was no Hamas. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, was not even in the country; it was in Tunis. Israel met them with brutality, murder, administrative tension and ethnic cleansing. It has continued that day in, day out, and yet the Taoiseach's Government refuses even to call it an apartheid regime. It refuses to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and war crimes for which human rights organisation after human rights organisation has begged and appealed to the Government and other European governments to hold Israel to account and to end its impunity. The world has given it the licence to conduct the savagery it is doing now and it is responsible for the crimes we are witnessing. If we want to end the murder, we have to hold Israel accountable for its crimes.

I believe Ireland has a role to play in trying to bring peace, justice and order to the Middle East and that means working with our colleagues in the European Union, persuading the US and working at UN level to try to push for a new peace initiative to push for a two-state solution. Being absolutist on one side or the other removes our influence. The only influence we have is by trying to build partnerships with the EU, the US, other countries in the Middle East with which we have relationships such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, and at the UN to push for a new peace initiative that can do what I believe is still just about possible, namely, the establishment of a two-state solution with a Palestinian state alongside Israel, secure and hopefully in time being able to have normal contacts and normal economic relations.

I appreciate that the Deputy's view is different - he believes there should only be a one-state solution - but I think anyone watching what is going on can see why that would not be viable and would not last.

It is the two-state solution that has failed.