Middle East Peace Process
Dail Éireann — 2020-07-28
============================================================

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I must state that Deputy Costello is in the wrong Government if he is looking for legal action on Israel's flouting of human rights, international law or a Government that is going to fight in any serious way for justice for the oppressed Palestinian people, because the Government has stated that it will not pass Senator Black's Control of Economic Activities (Occupied Territories) Bill which would impose some sanctions.
I do not understand why the Government will not do that, or step up and insist that the EU ends the Euro-Mediterranean trade agreement which gives preferential trade status to Israel or recognise a Palestinian state. Before the Minister states it is not possible for us to take unilateral action because we are part of the EU, it is worth stating that we have learned something else from the Covid-19 crisis, and that is that states within the European Union are able to take unilateral action on travel restrictions which are not uniform across Europe. If we can do that during the emergency of Covid-19, why can Ireland not do that regarding the emergency of the annexation of Palestinian land?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-07-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-28