Foreign Conflicts
Dail Éireann — 2023-03-21
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Brendan Howlin (LAB), Wexford

It is no use all of us saying we will continue to condemn and so on if the basis for a solution is fundamentally undermined and made impossible. Then, we are talking about a single state. Is that the only viable outcome that is left? That will mean permanent conflict in Israel, in my view. We heard the Israeli finance minister, Mr. Bezalel Smotrich, say there is "no such thing" as a Palestinian people and his claim that the Palestinian people are a fictitious nation. That is what he said. That is articulating what is actually now the policy of the entire far-right Government that is currently ruling Israel and causing hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to take to the streets to protest about the erosion of fundamental democracy there. I ask the Minister to articulate a strategy that will save the possibility of a two-state solution. Can we build enough coherent allies to achieve that?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-21