Paul Murphy: Government Shelves Occupied Territories Bill Promise

I remember well the debate on RTE during the general election where it was kind of a quick-fire question, will you implement the Occupied Territories Bill? And no hesitation, Neil Martin, Simon Harris, yes, yes. There was also then someone with a camera phone went and talked to Simon Harris in a cafe and will you implement the Occupied Territories Bill? Oh yes, no question, no ifs, buts. This is an absolute priority for me. So we had one promise made to the public during a general election and now that promise is effectively being abandoned. The bill, the Occupied Territories Bill, which everyone understood to mean goods and services, is now being gutted to remove the majority of trade. We know that on average 70% of trade is in services rather than goods and that 70% is now being removed. Why is that happening? I mean we might get, we might not, you never know which arguments you'll get, but we might get some legal arguments today which are utterly spurious and empty and if I get time I'll go through it. But the reason they're so spurious and empty is because this is not about the law and there is an interesting tension between how Neil Martin describes it and how Simon Harris describes it because Simon Harris says, oh I'm on the side of the people, I'd love to do it, just legally I can't, but then can't actually explain why legally he can't. Whereas Neil Martin kind of comes out and says the truth is that well we don't want to damage our relations with US corporations and that's the truth. We have suspended independent foreign policy for the benefit of US multinational corporations and for the fear of offending Donald Trump. That's what's happening here and there's no clearer example than that than you had, this was revealed by the Ditch, the US ambassador then Claire Cronin contacting the Taoiseach saying there would be consequences for US companies in Ireland if the bill proceeded and then hours after that, then Tánaiste, Neil Martin announcing the bill will be shelved for review, directly contradicting the AG's advice that amendments were sufficient. That's what this has always been about, an Irish government that has been triangulating between public opinion and the movement for Palestinian solidarity which has put them under tremendous pressure and then the wishes of the US administration and US corporations and this is their their kind of way of dealing with it is to say we're doing it try and send a signal to the movement and the popular opinion or we're taking action while simultaneously saying to US companies don't worry none of you are actually going to be affected by this it's not actually going to be in any way significant and it's it's really really shameful. It's really shameful to put the interests of Donald Trump and the big US multinationals before public opinion, before promises of the general election and before most importantly standing up against apartheid, against genocide, against the reality of what this Israeli state is and what these occupied territories are about. And what does this mean in real terms? It means even after this bill is passed and implemented, presuming that the government is going to reject all of our amendments, you will still in Ireland be able to go on to Airbnb, you will be able to see advertised a quote warm and lovely community settlement and in an Israeli settler village Tekoa, with no mention of course of the violence against the Palestinian village of Tuku, with no mention of the dispossession that has taken place and the violence that continues to maintain this quote warm and lovely community settlement. It means booking.com will be able to continue to list settlement properties in the West Bank. From 2018 to 2030 they tripled from 26 to 70, they tripled their East Jerusalem listings to 39 in the year before October 2023. The continuation of potentially pine goods in terms of Amazon. We know that in 2020 Amazon was found to be offering free shipping to illegal settlements but not to their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank. Multinational corporations here or with operations here that trade with the settlements include Airbnb, Etsy, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Barclays, Motorola, Remax Holdings, booking.com. So all these companies and all this trade is going to be able to continue. It fundamentally contradicts the government's own position. The government's own position is that we couldn't do anything until the ICJ ruling. The ICJ ruling changes everything because the ICJ ruling says quote all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings and quote prevent trade or investment relations with the settlements. For the government's legal argument that's the turning point but the problem with the government's argument is that the ICJ ruling makes no distinction between goods and services. So the government then later on suggests that oh there's some sort of distinction here in terms of the public policy exemption that somehow this only applies to goods and not to services even though all the legal experts even the legal experts who disagree with this bill all agree that such a distinction is absolutely nonsense. The public policy exemption either applies to both or applies to neither. And the result is the government has gotten itself into this position whereby they're going to implement law supposedly to bring us in line with the ICJ ruling but which they acknowledge themselves is not actually going to bring us into compliance with international law. Like I thought it was really interesting that in the in a particular engagement at the committee with Deputy O'Leary the minister said I have said Deputy O'Leary asked does the minister ultimately accept that this bill with this bill Ireland would not be in full compliance with the ICJ judgment. Minister says I've said very clearly that this would go towards compliance but the two-pronged approach is absolutely what would make us fully compliant. We're working and taking actions to be fully compliant. The intention is to be fully compliant not partially compliant. But being partially compliant with international law it's a little bit like being a little bit pregnant. I mean you're either in breach of international law or your compliance with international law. So the government is proposing a bill supposedly predicated on the ICJ which is going to continue to have us in breach of international law because we're going to continue to allow trade in services with these illegally occupied territories. And it goes back to the fundamental point that none of the legal arguments make sense here whatsoever. This is all about politics and this is about US interests and it's shameful that those interests are being put first. And for me it underlines the fact that we need to continue to mobilize. We continue to pressure for services to be included even after this bill. But more fundamentally it isn't just the illegally occupied territories that we should be stopping trade with. We should be dropping trade with the entire apartheid genocidal state of Israel. The idea that we continue trade with such a state after almost three years of genocide is obviously horrendous.