Irish MPs likely to be next to vote for recognition of Palestine


December 8, 2014
Sarah Benton

Two articles from the Irish Journal (thejournal.ie): 1) Dail MPs expected to vote to call on government to recognise state of Palestine; 2) Gerry Adams banned by Israel from returning to Gaza.


August 2014: Dublin marchers protest the Israeli treatment of Gaza. Organised by The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), it started at the Garden of Remembrance and finished at the Dept of Foreign Affairs on St Stephen’s Green. From Breaking News, photo credit not given.

Ireland could soon be the latest country to recognise the State of Palestine

Sinn Féin want the Government to change the State’s official position.

By the Irish Journal (thejournal.ie)
December 08, 2014

THE DÁIL WILL vote on Wednesday on whether to call on the Government to officially recognise the State of Palestine.

Sinn Féin will use its Private Members’ time on Wednesday to lay down the motion and have called on all parties to support it.

Back in October, the Seanad passed a similar motion calling on the Government to follow the lead of 135 nations in recognising Palestinian statehood.

The motion was passed without a vote in October when it was roundly supported and it was signed by 31 of the upper house’s 60 members.

Eight EU member states currently recognise Palestine as an State with Sweden recently becoming the first to do so while an EU member.

The recognition would be largely symbolic and Sinn Féin argues that doing so would help advance the international consensus for a two-state solution to the territorial conflict.

“The right of Palestinians to self-determination and to have their own state as well as the right of the State of Israel to exist within secure borders is unquestionable,” argued Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

The motion specifically requests that the Government recognise the State of Palestine on the basis of borders in place prior to Israel’s 1967 occupation.
Currently, Ireland’s official position is that the State supports a two-state solution on those borders. It reads:

A two state solution allied to a return to pre-1967 borders unless amended by agreement between the two parties, an agreed solution to the issue of Palestinian Refugees who fled/left their houses in 1948 and 1967, Israel to cease settlement activities and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001.

The Sinn Féin motion goes further in that it requests recognition of the state as opposed to a preferential solution.

Introducing the motion, Adams said that Ireland “came onto the streets to demand an end to attacks on Gaza” during the Summer violence.

“Finding a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians and between Arabs and Israelis in a broader context, is a key element of Irish foreign policy,” he added.

Sinn Féin had intended on using is private members’ time in the Dáil this week to table a motion of no confidence in Enda Kenny but the government has tabled a motion of confidence in the Taoiseach that will now be debated tomorrow instead.



Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Féin , and a Teachta Dála (member of the Dáil Éireann, Ireland’s lower parliamentary house, for Louth since 2011. Seen here visiting Gaza in 2009. Photo by AP/Press Association Images

Israel won’t let Gerry Adams into Gaza

The Sinn Féin president was denied access by Israeli authorities.

The Journal.ie
December 05, 2014

The Louth TD is currently on a three-day tour of Israel and Palestine and intended to travel to the region to meet with those affected by the recent conflict.

Yesterday he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. He also met with Dr Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, and Israeli Labour Party leader Issac Herzog.

Adams had received an invite from the United Nations Works and Relief Agency to visit Gaza. He had last visited the region in 2009.

Speaking about the situation, Adams described it as “deeply disappointing”, saying:

Preventing me from travelling to Gaza and talking to those citizens who have survived three Israeli assaults in the last decade and who are besieged and in need of massive aid to rebuild their shattered economy and society, runs contrary to the needs of a peace process and is very unhelpful.

“The Israeli decision,” Adams said, “is a reminder of the imperative of supporting the Palestinian efforts to secure UN and international recognition of the Palestinian state. That campaign has seen some success in recent months and next month it will be debated in the European Parliament.”

It is also in a small way a reminder of the apartheid system that now applies.

Adams also said that he had raised the issue of the recognition of a Palestinian state with Taoiseach in the Dáil this week and that the people of Palestine have “the right to national statehood”.

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