FIANNA FÁIL LEADER and former Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin has said the Government needs to call the Israeli ambassador back in and articulate the Irish people’s “outrage” over the country’s military action against Gaza.
It comes as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appeals to both sides in the dispute to stop fighting and “start talking”.
More than 600 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed in the past two weeks of fighting, officials say.
Charlie Flanagan, who took over as Minister for Foreign Affairs in this month’s reshuffle, met with Israeli ambassador Boaz Modai last week.
He expressed the Government’s “deep concerns” about the current situation, according to a statement released after the meeting, and said it was “incumbent on all sides to agree an immediate ceasefire”.
However Martin, who served in the department between 2008 and 2011, said the Government needed to go further in its approach.
“I think the Government should bring him in and should articulate the outrage that Irish people genuinely feel about what is happening in Gaza,” he told reporters at the Magill Summer School in Donegal.
“You cannot bomb Gaza in the manner that the Israelis have without slaughtering children and women — and that, again, is what has happened.
It is an outrage. I think the Government should call it as it is.
“I think the international community, in my view, have not called it as it is in a robust manner
I accept that Hamas are reckless in terms of their rocket firing and they’re wrong. But nothing justifies what happened on that beach when four young children were bombed to bits.
He said the Israeli action was “completely disproportionate” and accused the international community of engaging in a sort of “silent acquiescence”.
Martin added that the ongoing Israeli action “makes the extreme position in Palestine more popular” and underlines the capacity of moderate leaders to assert themselves.
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