A question I ask myself day in and day out, a question the Palestinians ask themselves day in and day out, and a question Irish people ask themselves constantly is why the Irish Government is not doing anything in the face of the ongoing human rights violations and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. Perhaps it is because we hear there is a ceasefire. Perhaps this is why the Government is not doing anything. We all know that, in reality, there is no actual ceasefire.

Since the so-called ceasefire, Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza has continued. Nearly 700 Palestinians have died and 2,000 have been injured. Perhaps because 70,000 people have been killed altogether the numbers have lost any meaning for us. On Sunday, a strike against a refugee camp killed three and injured ten. The Rafah crossing is, once again, closed with little to no humanitarian aid getting in. The Government shrugs its shoulders and says it cannot do anything about it. The UN has been cataloguing what it calls a systematic assault on humanitarian operations in the occupied Palestinian territory. A total of 37 aid organisations, including Irish organisations such as Trócaire, GOAL and Concern, and Médecins Sans Frontières, have been banned from providing essential life-saving aid to those in Gaza. More than 2,000 healthcare and humanitarian workers have been killed, many of whom were also working for the UN.

Due to the deliberate targeting of food imports, many Palestinians are starving to death. It is estimated that about four out of every five people are facing crisis levels of hunger. We saw the horrendous massacre of the Bani Odeh family returning home from a Ramadan shopping trip. We have seen the unspeakable cruelty of the Israel Defense Forces, IDF, inflicting torture on an 18-month-old baby, including burning his little legs with cigarettes and poking him with rusty nails for ten hours before handing him back to the Red Crescent, while his father remained in detention. They were torturing a toddler.

Every day, there are new and horrific breaches of international law by Israel. Israel is now furthering its expansionist colonial plans in south Lebanon, where it has already displaced more than 1 million people, blown up seven bridges and killed more than a thousand civilians, including children and healthcare workers in the process.

For these and countless other reasons I could list all day, I ask why the Irish Government is not doing anything. You might say we cannot stop this and ask what we can do. We can pass the occupied territories Bill and show the Palestinian people that there is political will to back them in their cause for peace. What use is the recognition of Palestine? We talk about how Ireland was one of the first countries in the world in respect of this cause but it was the 142nd country in the world to recognise the state of Palestine. What is the point of it when the facts on the ground do not change and when Palestine is reduced to rubble and dust? So much for statehood recognition. What does it mean in practice? How did it change the lives of the Palestinian people?

We need a commitment from the Minister that she will bring the occupied territories Bill forward without delay and come to this House to explain why she has not. We wait for the Attorney General’s advice. We wait for so long. The Government can say it needs to ask the Attorney General more questions and that the details are not clear yet. It is about ten months since the foreign affairs committee, on a cross-party basis, approved a recommendation to pass the occupied territories Bill immediately, covering services, and at the same time requested that the Department, as part of a dual process, put all the plans in place to pass it, yet we have nothing.