Thomas Pringle TD
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Pringle joins legislators from 13 countries in calling for arms embargo to Israel

Pringle joins legislators from 13 countries in calling for arms embargo to Israel

Independent TD for Donegal, Thomas Pringle, has joined more than 200 legislators from 13 countries in calling for an immediate arms embargo to Israel.

Deputy Pringle said: “Horrific and devastating Israeli attacks have killed more than 30,000 Palestinian people in this ongoing genocide. I have signed a letter organised by the Progressive International network that calls for the immediate banning of arms sales to Israel.

“We must take real action to end the genocide of the Palestinian people.

“In 2023, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment received and issued 32 applications for individual dual-use authorisations for exports to Israel with a value of more than €70.3 million. Dual-use items are goods, software and technology that can be used for both civil and military applications.

“The Minister has said his officials ‘carry out a series of checks to ensure, as far as possible,’ that items exported will be used by the stated end-user for the stated end-use. With the genocide we see unfolding in Gaza, I believe we must not engage in trade to Israel of goods that could be used for military applications,” he said.

The letter Deputy Pringle signed states: “We cannot wait. Following the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Genocide Convention case against the State of Israel, an arms embargo has moved beyond a moral necessity to become a legal requirement.

“We will not be complicit in Israel’s grave violation of international law. The ICJ ordered Israel not to kill, harm or ‘deliberately [inflict] on the [Palestinians] conditions of life calculated to bring about… physical destruction.’ They have refused. Instead, they press on with a planned assault on Rafah that the Secretary General of the United Nations has warned will ‘exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare’,” the letter states.

The letter was also signed by legislators from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the United States.

Deputy Pringle said: “I said in the Dáil recently that according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which provided data on arms sales from Europe to Israel between 2013 and 2022, Italy and Germany had supplied Israeli military with weapons and equipment it is now using on the ground in Gaza.

“People across Europe and around the world have condemned Israel for the genocide we see taking place. We cannot wait any longer for an arms embargo to Israel. The Palestinian people cannot wait any longer.”