Two-year-old Laila al-Khatib was feeding in her mother’s arms at their village home near Jenin on January 25th when an Israeli soldier’s bullet smashed through the house and into her head. She was her parents’ only child. In the home video of her at play, her joie de vivre is boundless.
Laila was one of dozens of Palestinian residents who have been killed by soldiers in the West Bank since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officially commenced what it calls a counter-terrorism operation there just hours after Donald Trump became the US president. One of the first orders he issued was to cancel trade sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on illegal settlers in the West Bank with records of violence against Palestinians.
The IDF action in the territory is not a new campaign. It is an intensified one. While nearly 47,000 lives were being extinguished in Gaza following Hamas’s murderous rampage in Israel on October 7th, 2023, it barely caused an international ripple that the IDF was simultaneously killing people in the West Bank. Roads have been bulldozed, buildings demolished and the inward flow of settlers has gathered pace. Brussels-based think tank the International Crisis Group logged 1,000 instances of settler violence and more than 1,300 Palestinians displaced between October 2023 and September 2024. Breaking the Silence, a campaign group comprising former Israeli soldiers calling for an end to the occupation, has warned that the West Bank is being “Gazified”.
On November 5th last – three days before the general election was called – Micheál Martin, as the minister for foreign affairs, told an Oireachtas select committee that the government was committed to passing the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, designed to outlaw Irish trade in goods and services with illegal settlers. Martin has long been an intrepid defender of Palestinian human rights and was the first European foreign minister to visit Gaza following the Israeli decision not to allow ministers to enter through its borders. Citing the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in July concluding that Israeli settlements and the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources are illegal and that there is an onus on all states not to support them, Martin said the government had requested updated advice on the Bill from the Attorney General.
“In light of the new context provided by the advisory opinion, the government has decided to review the Bill and prepare amendments,” he informed the committee. “The purpose of the amendments will be to try to bring the Bill into line with European Union law and the Constitution and to reduce the risk of infringement proceedings against the State.” Significantly, he stated that the Government had decided not to ditch the Bill, introduced by Independent Senator Frances Black seven years ago. “In fairness and in deference to the authors [of the Bill], the government has decided on taking the route of amending [it],” Martin said.
Throughout the general election campaign, voters were assured that a future Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael government would support the existing Bill. Yet soon after Christmas, the mood music changed. In December, Israel’s ambassador, Dana Erlich, claimed the legislation would preclude American companies from operating in Ireland. Political editor Pat Leahy wrote in this newspaper on January 12th that the Bill was causing “a growing outbreak of the heebie-jeebies” in government amid “trepidation” about its potential economic, political and diplomatic consequences. A week later, on the day Fianna Fáil delegates approved the Programme for Government at a special ardfheis, Martin – as incoming Taoiseach – announced the Bill would have to be scrapped and new legislation drafted instead. The reason he gave was that “virtually every section” of it needed to be amended. Bafflingly, this U-turn comes as Rossa Fanning returns to the position of Attorney General. Has his advice changed since November? If not, what exactly has changed?
The bum on the seat in the Oval Office is what has changed. On the very day Martin was assuring the Oireachtas committee it was full steam ahead, Trump was elected president, ushering in a new world order, or, rather, a new world disorder. Overnight, the US has mutated from the “world’s policeman” into its most threatening aspirant colonist. With no regard for law, history or diplomacy, Trump has expressed designs on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. Now the West Bank is in his sights. Having slapped a 90-day freeze on US foreign aid, he wants the US to seize ownership of Gaza and turn it into Mar-a-Lago on the Med. No doubt he’ll spew out some other wilfully ignorant notion next week to keep the world transfixed by his King Lear complex.
If the Irish Government capitulates to Trump’s economic threats, it will have the blood of children like Laila al-Khatib on its hands. Protecting the Irish economy against a Trump-instigated trade war is vital but the rights and the lives of innocent human beings should not be sacrificed for the cause. I do not believe Martin has it in him to make such a pact with the devil. He has already withstood egregious pressure from Israel over Ireland’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and its support for South Africa’s genocide case at the International Criminal Court, culminating in the closure of its embassy in Dublin when he was the minister for foreign affairs. Now is not the moment to lose heart.
EU leaders have agreed that, if Trump attempts to hit the bloc with his beloved tariffs, they will oppose the measure as a united front because there is strength in numbers. Dáil Éireann should take a leaf from the Brussels book. There is all-party support for the Occupied Territories Bill in the Oireachtas. Is it too much to ask that all parties come together to agree a schedule for the Bill’s urgent passage and enactment, with specified deadlines for its Dáil, Seanad and committee stages?
There are junctures in history when initiatives such as the Tallaght Strategy and the confidence-and-supply arrangement are necessary in the interests of the public good. Rather than scoring political points over the West Bank, cross-party co-operation between Government and Opposition is needed now because people are being killed in the West Bank and because we know in Ireland that “ní neart go cur le chéile”.
