Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2023-10-17
============================================================

Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

It is abundantly clear that Israel is not abiding by international law, humanitarian law or the law of wars, as the Taoiseach put it. There have been 3,000 Palestinian deaths. Many more people are missing under the rubble. We have witnessed with our own eyes collective punishment and the targeting of civilian infrastructure resulting in no water, no medicines, no food and an increased level of desperation. We have seen, and Israel openly called for, forced transfer of the population, another violation of international law in the clear sight of the international community.
I appreciate absolutely the need to condemn the horror that was visited on Israel and the killing of those civilians and taking of hostages. I absolutely do, but I cannot understand or accept the Taoiseach's failure to condemn the Israeli onslaught on a refugee population hemmed in in what has been described as the world's largest open air-prison, with an impoverished refugee population.

---

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/2023-10-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-10-17