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.

He probably said to let him out of jail.

He has said:

A Palestinian state will endanger our existence ... I will not divide Jerusalem, I will not evacuate any [settlements]

The one disappointing part of the engagement with Sadaka today was the fact that every political party was invited to send representatives. Just two parties did not bother. It will not surprise anyone to learn those two parties were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I commend Senator Martin, who did attend and spoke very ably on the issue. I want to say very directly to the Acting Leader that both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are standing on the wrong side of history when it comes to this issue. Thanks to Senator Black, we have the occupied territories Bill. It needs to be passed because otherwise the record will show that this Government did not take the steps required to challenge apartheid as it exists today.

One of the other things Michael Lynk said was that, when looked at in detail, apartheid as applied in Israel is much worse than the apartheid regime in South Africa. For example, in South Africa they did not say only these people could walk on particular roads but they do that in occupied Palestine. I appeal to the Deputy Leader for a further discussion on this issue. I would also like an explanation as to why neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael bothered to send a representative to that conference today. It was appalling and it went down like a lead balloon. It is time we all took a stand for justice. We should remember how we tackled apartheid in South Africa back in the 1980s. We came together to apply sanctions. We have a route to do that via the occupied territories Bill and we should do it. There are no excuses for the Government not to act on this issue.