Sinn Féin spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Matt Carthy, has issued a scathing rebuke of the Irish government and international community’s ‘failure to introduce any meaningful sanctions against Israel in the face of a new assault on the West Bank’.

Following airstrikes and a ground incursion which led to the death of at least 10 Palestinians, injuring nearly 40 more, Carthy said that ‘it is the inaction of governments such as Micheál Martin’s that consistently emboldens Israel to commit war crimes with impunity’.

Teachta Carthy said:

“In July of 2023 when Israel launched what was the largest invasion of the West Bank since the second intifada, 10 Palestinians in Jenin were killed, with more than 100 injured.

“At that time, Sinn Féin cautioned the Tánaiste Micheál Martin of the consequences of a continued light touch approach to Israel’s flagrant breach of international law, calling upon government to seek the suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement and the passing of the Occupied Territories Bill.

“In the time since we have witnessed a genocide in Gaza, intensified Israeli violence against the West Bank and, now, a now new Israeli assault upon the Jenin refugee camp.

“Micheál Martin’s government has failed utterly to even secure a review of the EU Israel Association Agreement, seemed indifferent to illegal arms trafficking through Ireland in support of Israels genocide, and now are effectively looking to weaken the Occupied Territories Bill by not committing to a full ban on trade in goods and services within the new Programme for Government. It is this failure to introduce any meaningful sanctions against Israel that emboldens Israel to commit war crimes with impunity’.

“Those actions which the previous government did take were on the foot only of public and political pressure from Sinn Féin, other opposition voices and groundswell of public activism in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“While millions of us around the world celebrated the ceasefire, the release of hostages held by Hamas and the Israeli government, and the chance for reprieve for the beleaguered people of Gaza, Israel has clearly decided that the Palestinian people of the West Bank must now endure inhumane barbarity.

“Sinn Féin will exert maximum pressure on the new government, including through bringing motions to the Dáil, in the coming weeks to force Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to finally act – we know that we will be joined in this by other opposition parties, and those same ordinary Irish people who have, in their tens of thousands, shown their abhorrence at Israel’s war crimes, and the inaction of their government.”