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Dear Minister Coveney Over 1,500 Palestinians from neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem are facing threat of forced displacement and home demolitions by Israeli authorities. Children make up a large percentage of the families threatened with homelessness. Recently Israeli courts have ruled in favor of Israeli settlers and given four Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood until May to leave their homes. In the Silwan neighborhoods of Al Bustan and Batin al Hawa, a total of 21 Palestinian families are facing home demolition as soon as May 11th to make way for an Israeli tourist site. This is part of Israel's larger plan of racist colonial expansion throughout East Jerusalem and the West Bank, forcibly displacing Palestinian families from their land and homes and replacing them with illegal Israeli settlements. “What we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah is Israel's attempt to erase the Palestinian presence from our native city in real time,” says Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is among those set to be forcefully evicted in May. “This fate of dispossession looms over much of my neighborhood. Our lives are consumed by the anxiety of living on the brink of homelessness.” The proposed evictions constitute a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law and the laws of war. They are in direct and deliberate violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that the occupying power of a territory is not permitted to alter the demographic character of that territory; is not permitted to forcibly displace civilians under its protection; is not permitted to transfer part of its civilian population to a territory it occupies; and is not permitted to permanently change the character of the territory it administers. These evictions seek to do each of these things, for the singular - and racist - reason that Israel seeks to further colonise and ‘Judaize’ East Jerusalem by evicting, expelling and otherwise making life unbearable for the city’s indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. IRELAND MUST ACT Ireland, as a member of the UN Security Council and as a widely respected international actor has both a duty and a responsibility to champion and defend international law. Recalling that international law serves to protect us all and prevent the tyranny of the strong over the weak, the IPSC calls upon Ireland to take the lead in imposing measures to further prevent the erosion of trust in our agreed international institutions and norms. * I call upon the Irish government to urgently issue a public condemnation of Israel’s actions and demand that Israel immediately cease the unlawful application of Israeli civil law and practices upon occupied East Jerusalem. * I echo the call from Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq asking “the international community to cooperate to bring to an end, including through coercive measures such as sanctions, Israel’s occupation, colonisation, and apartheid regime, as well as the prolonged denial of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, lands, and property, as mandated by international law.” * I further on the Irish government to recognise that providing an effective deterrent and effective remedy to gross violations carried out against Palestinian civilians should for Ireland mean expediting the long-delayed passage of the Occupied Territories Bill into law; ending the participation of the Garda Síochána in the ROXANNE Programme, and closing the IDA office in Tel Aviv. Yours sincerely,