People up and down the country, and certainly people in County Laois, are infuriated by the war crimes carried out by Israel and what it has got away with: the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, the genocide and slaughter we witness on our television screens evening after evening, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian West Bank, the occupation of southern Lebanon, the massacre of Lebanese people and the deliberate efforts to prevent any hope of a two-state solution. Then there is the Israeli torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners on the orders of the war criminals - they are not a government - who pose as an Israeli government. As a supposedly sovereign Parliament we have the power here to take action. All trade in goods and services to Israel, I believe, should be stopped. However, this Bill is about the occupied territories and we should ban all goods and services from the occupied territories. There should be no dancing around that and no ifs or buts. We must also continue to demand and work with other EU states to cancel the EU preferential trade agreement. Anything less is a cop out. Of the trade between Ireland and the occupied territories, 70% is in services. The EU and Ireland were quick to ban trade and to put sanctions on Russia, and rightly so. Yet, when it comes to Israel all we hear are excuses. What is worse, a lot of EU states are actually helping to sustain Israel's war in terms of supplying it with arms and the materiel for arms. The International Court of Justice has decreed not just that we can do it, but that we are obliged to do it due to the war crimes being carried out. Over 400 prominent lawyers have stated that we can ban trade in goods and services with the occupied territories but the Government said there are legal issues, that it is complicated and referred to the Attorney General's advice. They say the banning of services would be impossible to implement and so on. The Government should publish the Attorney General's advice. Spain has been able to impose a ban on goods and services and the advertisement of services. Other EU states are taking similar steps. There are clear parallels here with the boycott against South Africa and it may have been a small step at the time over in Dunnes Stores on Henry Street but that snowballed and was huge in terms of isolating the apartheid regime. Trade with the occupied territories in Ireland will not amount to billions of euro but that is no excuse not to stop it. People are angry and people want action. There is massive support for penalties against Israel. It is time for action. We have had eight years of dithering. We cannot have it any longer. Ban trade in goods and services, use the forthcoming EU Presidency to push for similar measures at EU level and work towards the full suspension of the Israel-EU trade agreement.

Sentiment score: -0.20