Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, I think there is a military operation under way in Rafah. There is a degree of semantics as to scale and so on. It is horrific that there is such a military operation under way. Gaza has been levelled. The destruction is absolutely shocking in terms of the destruction of schools, houses, universities and hospitals so the very essence of any society to live in any humane way. All those essentials have been destroyed by Israel and its continued bombardment.

Many of the UN agencies went to Rafah in anticipation that the city would be a safe zone from which to conduct their operations in terms of humanitarian aid to be deployed to Palestinians in Gaza. It is absolutely unconscionable that the Israeli military and the Israeli Government have decided on a military operation into Rafah, and are conducting one right now, which is resulting in the destruction of the city but also in the killing of innocent men and women and, above all, children. I have outlined the list of what Ireland already has done. There has to be accountability. Unfortunately, accountability does not happen immediately but there are international instruments for accountability. I mentioned earlier the International Criminal Court, ICC, which is investigating. We have provided a further €1 million on top of the substantial resources that we gave last year. I understand that it was €3 million and we have put a further €1 million on top of that to make sure that the chief prosecutor has the resources. We have also called for protection for the ICC personnel against intimidation or attempts to undermine them in their work, which I believe is very important work in holding Israel to account.

We have indicated that we are preparing a legal intervention in the ICJ case that South Africa has initiated. As the Deputy will know, I did say in the Dáil that South Africa has been given a timetable for the submission of their memorial, which is their substantive case, in October and we are preparing a submission. As I said earlier, we are already working an idea ourselves, under Article 63, whereby we would attempt to broaden the criteria by which the court would judge genocide to have taken place. We believe that is a potentially important avenue to press legally to try to broaden the thresholds basically, because the thresholds were set very high in the context of finding a conclusion of genocide. That is around the prevention of humanitarian aid, starvation as a weapon, the siege and the prevention of the essentials of life getting into Gaza. We have more work to do. Obviously we must see the South African memorial and we are liaising with South Africa in respect of that. That is important because Ireland must be credible when we make a submission.