The “Occupied Territories Camp Out” event will begin as a vigil to remember the tens of thousands of children who have been murdered. There will be music, poetry, and a number of Palestinian speakers.
There will be a visual display of pillow babies, children’s shoes, and teddies to symbolise the children whose futures have been robbed due to Israel’s genocide of Gaza. There will be 70 pictures of martyred children to represent the 70 children per day murdered in Gaza by conservative figures.
The action will progress to an all-night camp out with people from counties around Ireland present, uniting to call for the Irish Government to act on the ever-worsening Genocide in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and to take meaningful action by including services in the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB). People travelling for this action include artists, mothers, healthcare workers, and people who simply cannot sit by and watch the Irish state do the bare minimum. The systems are broken, and we have no interest in fixing broken systems. We are standing together for complete change: people first, end the genocide, and hold Israel accountable.
The submission of thousands of postcards, from a nationwide OTB include services postcard campaign will be handed in to Dáil on Tuesday 8th of July at 10am. This is in advance of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trades final meeting for pre-legislative scrutiny of the new OTB, being held later that morning. Members from solidarity groups from every province will hand in their postcards collected from their locality holding their county flag. To show that the Irish people demand the full enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill,including services. The postcards state:
Services must be included, excluding them makes the law ineffective and allows continued profiteering from illegal settlements through digital platforms, financial services and infrastructure contracts. International law obliges states to prevent trade and investment that sustains illegal occupations. No half measures. No complicity. Include services.
The draft of the “Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Prohibtion of importation of Goods) published by Tánaiste Simon Harris currently excludes Services. Ireland is Israel's second largest trading partner after the US according to the Central Statistics Office. The majority of which is by services. To remove services from this bill is cowardly, it is a betrayal of international law and it is not using every level of power available to us, a phrase Tánaiste Simon Harris is so fond of using.
Megan Ni Ghabhlain a spokesperson for Mothers Against Genocide stated, “Legislating for goods alone is not enough of a sanction for Israel in the face of the dystopian horror they have inflicted over the last 20 months on innocent Palestinians. Children continue to be starved to death and murdered. It is beyond time that Israel is sanctioned and it is beyond time that the Irish Government stops facilitating the ongoing Genocide. This draft bill which excludes services is just a token gesture from the Government to appease us that will have little meaningful impact on Israel”.
Wafa’a Abusharekh a member of Mothers Against Genocide stated, “We have been relentlessly campaigning for 20 months imploring our government to take meaningful action, but we have been ignored. So before the Dáil summer recess, we feel we have no choice but to camp out all night in the hope that our government leaders will understand our desperation and finally take action and implement the OTB in full including services”.
Vigil: Monday 7th of July at 19:00, Dáil Éireann, Kildare Street entrance.