Government should call for EU trade sanctions against Israel

Sinn Féin TD for Cavan Monaghan Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin has said the Irish government should call for EU trade sanctions against Israel in protest at their ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters.

"Continuing attacks by Israel against the Palestinian Authority and its people must not be allowed to continue," he said. "If this situation was occurring anywhere else in the world, trade sanctions would already have been imposed and we would have seen an immediate arms embargo.

"As a state with a distinguished record in peacekeeping in the region, it is imperative that the Irish government uses whatever influence it has in the EU and internationally to try and bring an immediate end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.

"I am calling on the government to call for EU trade sanctions to send a very clear signal to the Israeli government that their activities are unacceptable to the international community.

"The EU has already played a leading role in supporting the legitimacy of the Palestinian state, they should follow up on this commitment with the imposition of economic sanctions against Israel."

Support for Palestinians




"Down with Sharon. Down with Bush. Let Palestinians live. End the occupation." Slogans cried out in anger, in outrage and with serious purpose, as around 1,000 people filled O'Connell Street as they marched last Saturday to the GPO, and then to the Israeli Embassy in Ballsbridge. There were similar demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people in cities across Europe.

The demonstration was multinational. Many carried their own posters, their own statements, amid the Palestinian flags and posters.

The march assembled at the Central Bank for speeches by John Gormley TD, Joe Costello, Trinity academic Ronit Lentin and Fianna Fáil Senator Michael Lanigan, and later at the GPO by Sinn Féin's Daithí Doolan; the Iman of the Muslin Community, Sheik Hussain Haloua; and the Palestinian delegate-general to Ireland, Ali Halimeh.

Becky Garcia spoke movingly about the bravery of her sister, Mary Kelly, from the Atlantis Commune, who is in Bethlehem, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Two Irish volunteers have attempted to deliver food and evacuate the wounded from a church where some 150 Palestinian civilians have taken refuge. Their cortege was fired at. An Israeli tank blocked their way. They stood their ground. They asked to proceed. The Israeli commander refused their request.


As Israeli tanks, military forces with helicopter gunships invade the camps, driving through the houses, arresting thousands, killing with impunity, people asked, how can they be stopped. "We will not stop" war criminal Sharon is quoted as saying "until we have rooted out the terrorists."

As Dublin Foreign Affairs minister Brian Cowen said on RTE's This Week programme, "The suggestion that you are going to have peace and stability on the basis of the most powerful party imposing on a subject nation the terms of a peace is simply not going to work. We know that and we have known that for a very long time." He might have added that we discovered this through bitter reality in our own country.


Belfast protest


The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Camapign held a demonsration at lunchtime on Thursday 4 April outside the US Consulate in Belfast to protest at the complicity of the Bush administration with the ongoing Israeli onslaught in the Middle East. The IPSC, along with humanitarian and civil rights organisations throughout the world, is calling on the US government use its undoubted influence with the Sharon government to force it to comply with UN resolutions, stop killing civilians and withdraw immediately from the Occupied Territories.