By IRNA,
London : Irish MP Aengus Snodaigh believes that it will be only through international pressure that Israel will be forced to end its siege of Gaza that has left 1.5 million Palestinians destitute.
“The Israeli siege needs to be eased simply to allow the Palestinians to survive,” said Snodaigh, who travelled as an observer with the latest attempt by the Free Gaza Movement to break the blockade last month.
“The people desperately need humanitarian aid, not just food. They also need medicines and fuel for the power station that was paid for by the EU,” he said in an interview with IRNA.
Snodaigh, who is Sinn Fein spokesman on Justice, Equality and International Affairs, protested to the Israel Embassy in Dublin following the abduction of three international observers traveling with Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza two weeks ago.
But he said that he had so far received no response to his letter to Israel Ambassador to Ireland Mark Sofer, demanding the return of the fishermen’s boats, saying the Israeli navy had “no business operating in Palestinian waters.”
“The Palestinians need to have the right to fish within 20 miles of Gaza as agreed since the establishment of the limit,” the Sinn Fein MP said.
He believed that as part of international pressure to break the siege, “the EU has to use its clout either by an Israeli boycott or enacting the human rights clause in its trade agreement.”
“They are breaching human rights and their duty as an occupying power,” Snodaigh warned.
“The Palestinians in Gaza had no access to the outside world,” he said.
He described the blockade as “collective punishment” and said the siege had been widely condemned by EU observers, including former Irish president and UN Human rights Commissioner Mary Robinson.
Last weekend, there was a protest demonstration in London calling on Egypt to open the Rafeh crossing, but the Irish MP believed that it was unlikely that Cairo would do anything without the support of the Middle East Quartet of the US, EU, Russia and UN.
But he insisted that Arab countries needed to raise their own support of the Palestinians and help to break the siege and heighten the awareness of the plight of the Gazan residents.
Snodaigh told IRNA that other parliamentarians in Europe were also trying to build up public awareness about the “bleak” situation in Gaza.
He himself was engaged in a number of projects in Ireland but he was not optimistic about action by the EU, who he said did not have a strong voice because of what he called the “German guilt complex”.
“The Palestinians also need to speak with one voice,” the Sinn Fein MP said in references to differences between Hamas and Fatah.
“If they unite, we could do a lot,” he said.
But in the longer-term, his belief was that the situation in Gaza as well as the West Bank was “going to get worse” and that any solution will take two to three years at least.”
Much faith, Snodaigh said, was in US president-elect Barack Obama.
He had the ability of bringing people to the table, but his support in the US depended upon Jewish vote, making “the Zionist lobby very powerful,” he said.