Our Taoiseach, Micheal Martin has been to the Israeli-Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. He is regularly updated by the Irish Consulate in Ramallah on the shocking level of violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers living in illegal settlements in these Israeli-Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt ), often supported by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF ). Mr Martin knows exactly what is happening on the ground.
It was particularly nauseating to hear the opening remarks of the Taoiseach, in his meeting with US President Trump in the White House on March 12 when he said, “I commend you in terms of the work that you’re doing, particularly in terms of the pursuit of peace which we discussed earlier, and I think that’s going well.”
Just weeks earlier, Mr Trump had outlined his plans that the US would “take over” Gaza and “own it”, effectively endorsing the ethnic cleansing of more than two million Palestinians. Mr Martin is also aware that the US continue to supply most of the bombs which Israel has used over the past 18 months to kill over 52,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including, on average, one child killed by Israel every 45 minutes.
Mr Martin knows that the US supports Israel in preventing a single piece of bread, glass of water or any medicine from entering Gaza since 2 March. Asked whether he’ll back Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Mr Trump stated, “That’s going to work out very well… work out automatically.”
This is Trump’s vision for Gaza and the West Bank, which Mr Martin commended him on.
The combined area of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, home to around 3 million Palestinians, is 10 per cent smaller in area than Co Galway. According to the Israeli organisation Peace Now, there are more than 720,000 Israelis living in more than 300 illegal settlements and outposts in this small area, supported by a powerful Israeli military.
To understand the impact of this, we need to imagine how we would feel if some foreign occupying military power moved more than 720,000 of their citizens into Co Galway, attacked our homes, farmers in our fields, and our children trying to get to school. Imagine if they demolished some of our homes, took over hundreds of thousands of acres of our land, our natural resources including our water, set up more than 500 military checkpoints and other obstacles within Co Galway, to facilitate the free movement of their settlers, making it difficult and dangerous for us to travel, preventing us from going to school, work, hospital appointments or simply visiting friends and relatives.
Imagine that our Government continued to support these settlers by trading with them.
This is exactly what our Government is doing for Israeli settlers in the oPt.
I served twice as a human rights monitor in the oPt, most recently from August to October 2023, when I was based in Masafer Yatta in the south of the West Bank. Masafer Yatta is home to many small, isolated Palestinian villages, which depend for their livelihood on their flocks of sheep and goats and their treasured olive trees, as they have for generations. I witnessed many examples of the impact of settler violence, often supported by the IDF. Most days, I receive reports from people there, with evidence of how this violence has escalated at an alarming rate since October 2023, some of which has been documented by Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem. I will outline just a few of the many recent examples from Masafer Yatta.
March 24, 2025: Israeli settler attack on Susiya village in Masafer Yatta.
On March 24, masked Israeli settlers, some of them armed with bats, knives and one of them with an M16 rifle, smashed vehicles and water tanks and beat a number of residents in Susiya. Members of the IDF observed the settler attack, but didn’t intervene to stop it. Among those attacked was Hamdan Ballal, one of the four directors of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. The film documents the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the violent expansion of Israeli settlements in Masafer Yatta.
Ballal described how settlers smashed his car, beat him in front of his home while he tried to protect his family. His main attacker, well known for his violence, had previously threatened Ballal with rape. Ballal and two other villagers were arrested and held at an army base, injured, handcuffed and blindfolded for more than 20 hours and forced to sleep on the floor under a freezing air conditioner. Associated Press journalists who saw Ballal on his release the following day described how he still had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.
Members of the Centre for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV ), while witnessing this settler attack in Susiya, were themselves attacked by the settlers and had all of the windows in their car smashed as they tried to escape. CJNV shared details of at least 43 attacks in Susiya alone since the beginning of this year, perpetrated by violent Israeli settlers.
March 28, 2025: Israeli settlers and soldiers attacked the village of Jinba in Masafer Yatta.
Four days later, Jinba was attacked. This attack, and countless others, receive little international attention in contrast with the Susiya attack, which involved an Oscar winner and also due to the presence of the CJNV.
At around 9am, at least 15 settlers, some masked and armed with sticks, stones and clubs, drove into Jinba and began assaulting residents. Several residents were seriously injured. Five Palestinians were hospitalised - two in intensive care, including a child.
After the settlers left at around 10am, a large group of Israeli soldiers and police arrived. They prevented ambulances from reaching the injured for more than 2 hours, while they handcuffed, blindfolded and arrested all 22 men in the village.
With only women and children left behind, about 140 soldiers and settlers again attacked the village at 1:30am of the next morning. The women described how among the soldiers were some of the settlers who had attacked them the previous day, now wearing military uniforms. The soldiers/settlers destroyed everything; furniture, kitchens, TVs, fridges, toilets and sinks. They ransacked every home, poured out supplies of olive oil and water onto the ground, vandalised every room in the local school, broke windows and doors, damaged furniture, equipment and solar panels. They destroyed the local clinic; everything inside was overturned and broken, including treatment beds. The school and clinic had been funded by the EU, including Irish Aid.
April 17, 2025:
Israeli settlers attack farmers in the village of Al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta
On April 17, three armed settlers started building a fence on farmland containing olive trees belonging to 60-year-old Saeed Rabaa.
Ilyas, the 16-year-old son of Saeed, began filming with his phone when one of the settlers attacked him from behind, seized his phone, and pinned him to the ground. When Saeed ran to help his son, one of the settlers then shot him in his leg.
Instead of arresting the settler, the IDF handcuffed, blindfolded and arrested 16-year-old Ilyas. He was held in Israeli military detention for 3 days. Israel is the only country in the world which detains children in military detention, detaining 500-700 Palestinian children each year, some as young as 12 years old.
Meanwhile, his father, Saeed, was also arrested and taken by the IDF to a hospital inside Israel, where, due to the severity of the injury, his right leg was amputated below his knee. He was held handcuffed to a bed for 3 days. Saeed and his son were both released on 20 April.
Saeed and his family have lived on this land for generations. Saeed’s father was born in Al-Rakeez in 1925, and his grandparents lived there long before 1925. This village is regularly attacked by settlers from nearby Israeli Avigayil settlement and a new Israeli outpost about 150 metres from Saeed’s home. Al-Rakeez is the village where, in 2021, an Israeli soldier shot 26-year-old Palestinian Harun Abu Aram in the neck at point-blank range, leaving him paralysed and eventually killing him. These are not isolated incidents. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli NGO Kerem Navot has documented over 50 rural Palestinian communities that have been forced to abandon their homes due to intensifying attacks and harassment by Israeli settlers, almost always with the backing of the Israeli army and police. Since January of this year, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes due to Israeli settler and military violence. Imagine if this happened to us in Co Galway.
The Irish Government’s obligations
All political parties, including Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, in their manifestos before the last election, committed to enacting the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB ), which would ban trade with the Illegal Israeli settlements in the oPt. This commitment followed the International Court of Justice (ICJ ) judgement in July 2024, which confirmed the illegality of Israel’s occupation and settlements in the oPt. Our Attorney General, Mr Rossa Fanning, in his submission to the ICJ on behalf of the Irish Government, argued that there’s an obligation on states not to recognise the situation as lawful and not to aid it through, for example, trade with illegal settlements. This opinion was confirmed in the ICJ judgement.
Despite this, our Government continues to support these violent settlers by trading with them.
All of us need to put pressure on our Government, including our local TDs, to immediately enact the OTB. Our Government must stop watching in silence, stop being complicit in their apathy and stop choosing to look the other way.
Máire Ní Mheibhric, a resident of Mionloch, Co na Gaillimhe, was a human rights observer in the West Bank.
