🇮🇪 Ireland becomes first 🇪🇺 EU country to declare Israel is involved in ‘de facto annexation’

Israel’s de facto annexation

The Irish parliament unanimously approved a resolution condemning Israel’s “de facto annexation” to the West Bank with government backing on Wednesday evening. He rejected a motion to expel the Israeli ambassador.

The motion against the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria was an initiative of the Sinn Féin opposition party, which has long adopted an anti-Israel stance. But he also had the support of the government.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the resolution made Ireland the first EU member state to officially accuse Israel of annexation.

“This is not something that I or, in my opinion, this House says lightly … But it reflects the enormous concern we have about the intention of the actions and, of course, their impact”, a- he told the Irish parliament on Tuesday. .

“The scale, pace and strategic nature of Israel’s actions on settlement expansion and the intent behind it have brought us to a point where we need to be honest about what is really going on there. ground, ”Coveney said. “It’s a de facto annexation.”

Successive Irish governments have long criticized Israel and have played a leading role in the EU to push for tougher responses to what they claim to be Israeli abuses.

EU foreign policy is defined by consensus and sanctions proposals from Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Sweden and others are always vetoed by member states who are friendlier to Israel.

During debate on the motion, MP Patricia Ryan compared the events in Gaza to the Holocaust, and MP Brid Smith said accusations of anti-Semitism were false, at a time when there was a peak of 500 % of anti-Semitic attacks in UK, Ireland. The Israeli Alliance said.

“Israel has de facto annexed the West Bank lands on which settlements are built” and is guilty of “gross violations of international law,” the resolution says.

At Coveney’s request, the motion was amended to say that the legislature “condemns the violent acts of Hamas and other militant groups, including the launching of rockets and incendiary devices from Gaza into Israel.”

The amendment also condemns “Israel’s indefensible response to the bombing of civilians and critical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”

Sinn Féin voted against the amendment.

The IDF struck Gaza more than 1,000 times during Operation Guardian of the Walls, mainly in targeted strikes targeting terrorist infrastructure.

The strikes killed around 60 civilians. Most of the victims in Gaza were Hamas terrorists. Many of the casualties, including children, were caused by rockets fired by terrorists which did not reach Israel but instead landed in the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Office said it “categorically rejects Ireland’s outrageous and baseless position regarding Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria” and that Ireland grants “a victory to the extremist Palestinian factions.”

“This position reflects a clearly one-sided and simplistic policy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat tweeted.

It was “unacceptable” to make “anti-Israel statements … at a time when Israeli citizens were the target of terrorist attacks by the more than 4,000 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip by the terrorist organization Hamas”. said the ministry.

Ireland-Israel Alliance executive director Jackie Goodall said the motion reads: “Ireland appears ready to take a position that deletes [it] as a potential broker for peace in the Middle East and removes any pretence from the Irish state [not] be openly hostile to the Jewish state.

“It was particularly sad to see many [lawmakers] who claim to be friends of Israel are abandoning Israel, ”she said. “No one spoke out in defence of Israel. Some spoke of wishes for peace, but all spoke on one side – against the State of Israel. “

“It seems the political powers that are in Ireland are determined to solidify Ireland’s status as the most anti-Israel western nation,” Goodall said. “Israel and the Israeli people can still count on many friends and allies among the Irish people, but few among their leaders.”

The Dáil, the lower house of parliament, also voted against a motion by the People’s Party before Profit (PBP) to expel the Israeli ambassador, 86-46. Motions are not binding.

The motion accused Israel of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and illegal settlement expansion. “The presence of the Israeli ambassador in Ireland is untenable under these circumstances,” he said.

This was only the first attempt to expel Israel’s ambassador, Smith, a PBP lawmaker, tweeted.

“We will come back to this until there is justice for Palestine,” she wrote. “Shame on those who claim to be friends of Palestine who voted against.”

Within the Irish government coalition, the Greens had asked for the freedom to be able to vote in favour of the motion, but they were refused.

Following Wednesday’s vote, the Greens said they would seek to promote the Occupied Territories Bill, which includes heavy fines on the sale of goods from the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

The bill was advanced several times in the Dáil and the Seanad (Senate), but was never passed on the grounds that it would violate EU trade laws.

Source: News & Media