Debate contribution: Gaza: Immediate Ceasefire

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 7 May 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

7 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Gaza: Immediate Ceasefire

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4488476

Read the official Assembly record

Text

It is important that the Assembly has a chance to discuss the urgent, pressing need for a ceasefire to be implemented to stop the Israeli killing machine. Despite all the declarations from this place about peace and peace processes, it is unforgivable that it has taken this long to have the debate about condemning genocide and the actions of Israel. It is long overdue for the Executive to call for a ceasefire. Rather than cosying up to states and Governments who fund the slaughter and the apartheid state, the Executive should call for a ceasefire. They should call for there to be no engagement with the apartheid state and for the expulsion of Israeli diplomats from these islands. So far, they have refused to do so. The scale of what has been taking place is horrendous and unimaginable. One can only imagine what it is like for Palestinians who are trying to live through probably the first live-streamed genocide of our times. Although the scale is grotesque, it is not an aberration. The violence did not begin on 7 October. There has been a 7 October every other month or so for Palestinians, who have been living under terror, occupation and apartheid since at least 1948 — before that, if you include the violent British mandate system that was imposed on Palestinians. There are a few issues with the motion that need to be mentioned before this place can hopefully call for a ceasefire. The first is that it equates the violence of those who are living under brutal occupation with those who seek to resist and push back against it. People often say, "What about peaceful protests?" Of course, that is always the preferred and usual way by which folk can and do stand against war and slaughter. However, when people tried to march peacefully for an end to Israeli occupation and violence, what happened? The Great March of Return was an attempt to do that. Palestinians with flags and banners were mowed down like dogs. Hundreds were killed, but there was no outrage from most Western states. Note the different reaction from states and Governments. We live in a cruel world: one in which some lives matter more than others. In that cruel world, in the eyes of most Governments, Palestinians are always at the bottom of the pile, their lives do not count and their stories do not matter. They do matter, however, to the millions of people across the world and across these islands who have marched to condemn the slaughter and to call for a ceasefire, the implementation of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the expulsion of Israeli ambassadors. Palestine is a litmus test for the world. It is a litmus test for humanity that people are meeting that test. Across the world — in the Middle East and elsewhere — most Governments are failing that test. The EU, Britain and the US are complicit in the slaughter. They are not just turning a blind eye to it, which would be bad enough, but are up to their necks in funding and backing it. Shame on them all. The people have still marched and taken to the streets. I commend all those people who have done so. I particularly mention the students and young people who are marching in the US and camping out in universities there. Here, I salute the students at Queen's who have occupied the Lanyon Building today to call on the Queen's administration to call out the Israeli state. Palestine is the end of the world that never ends. It is up to Palestinians to determine what their future looks like, free from assault, slaughter, massacres and occupation. It is a mistake for the motion to dictate what that should look like. In my view and that of many others, it is a mistake to impose a discredited, unworkable two-state solution on Palestinians, many of whom do not accept it for many reasons. We have recently seen that even the US does not want a two-state solution. It has resisted calls to implement one for decades. The Oslo Accords gave the green light to the extension of illegal and immoral Israeli settlements. Palestinians have every right to dismantle that apartheid system and apartheid state, and we support them in their right to do so. Unfortunately, the motion does not support that. Israel has to be seen as a settler, colonial, apartheid state. Growing numbers of people see it that way. The logic that should follow, as it did with South Africa, is that the state and the system should fall. Despite all the talk of agreeing a ceasefire, what does Israel do? With all the talk of a possible ceasefire in our midst, Israel goes to the border at Rafah, states that it will intervene there and implements slaughter on a mass scale. In that context, people need to go back to mobilising and to go back on to the streets to call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea. People need to end support for that apartheid system, that apartheid state and that brutal apartheid regime.

860 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:22 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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