For seven years Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have played hide-and-seek with the Occupied Territories Bill. What began in 2018 as a stand against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians has since been delayed, shelved, rewritten – and, most recently, gutted of all substance.
The bill now on the table – the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2025 – adds numerous spineless amendments to the original. Many have rightly called it the ‘de-fanged’ Occupied Territories Bill.
At a time when Netanyahu is stepping up his genocidal plans and a famine is ravaging Gaza, we say: no more waiting and delays! Fight for a full boycott of the Israeli war machine now!
Kicked in the long grass
The Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) was introduced in 2018 by independent Senator Frances Black. It sought to criminalise the import, sale and extraction of goods and services from territories under occupation, including Israel’s settlements in the West Bank.
It passed with cross-party support in the Dáil, with only Fine Gael opposing it. Their excuse? That it was “targeting the only true democratic state of the Middle East” – democratic, except for the tens of thousands it has slaughtered ever since, one might presume.
To be sure, Fianna Fáil support was hypocritical from the start. They needed to back the overwhelmingly popular bill to avoid bleeding support to Sinn Féin, but at the same time they were propping up Fine Gael’s minority government. They had no intention of actually progressing it, lest they upset Ireland’s imperialist masters in Washington.
Then the coalition government of 2020 removed it entirely from their programme, hoping to kick the question in the long grass. But Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, launched in October 2023, brought it forcefully to the spotlight once again and reignited popular support for the bill. It was therefore included as a vague promise in the 2025 programme for government.
But when the new Trump administration singled out Ireland for their ‘unfair’ trading practices and their support for Palestine, the sweat started to bead on the brows of the Irish ruling class.
De-fanged
Despite all the scaremongering about anti-BDS law in the US, supposed illegality etc., the reason for their nervousness is not legal or economic (Ireland’s trade with the Occupied Territories is small). It is political. You don’t bite the mouth that feeds you. A small dependent ruling class, like Ireland’s, will not defy its imperialist masters.
It is not a question of bad leaders or cowardly parties. It is a question of class interests. The Irish capitalist state – bound to the EU, dependent on US foreign investment, and integrated alongside NATO’s war machine – cannot and will not take action against the interest of the imperialists. But on the other hand, because of how popular the bill is, they cannot simply shelve it.
Thus, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have taken the Occupied Territories Bill and gutted it almost entirely now. To much popular uproar, their new version excludes services altogether – the very area where multinationals operating in Ireland are most entangled with Israel’s war machine. And they are now playing a game of delays once again, discussing the ‘legality’ and ‘implications’ of introducing services, talking with committees etc., paralysed in their impossible position.
To say what is, this new bill is a complete moral surrender, a declaration that the Irish ruling class will never so much as inconvenience imperialism. Even if they eventually pass something under immense pressure, they will make sure it will have as little impact as possible.
For a revolutionary solution
The past seven years prove beyond doubt: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot be trusted to enact even a bill with overwhelming popular support, let alone fight Israel’s genocide or free Palestine. Instead of waiting on the government or the Dáil to take any action, we should take the example from our own radical history.
Ireland’s much-celebrated role as the first Western country to sanction apartheid South Africa did not originate in Leinster House. It came from below – from the Irish working class.
When Dunnes Stores worker Mary Manning refused to handle grapefruits from apartheid South Africa, she was suspended. Her act of defiance lit the fuse: strikes and demonstrations spread, workers and youth rallied in solidarity, until a full boycott of Apartheid’s goods was implemented.
The lesson today is the same. The power to implement a boycott lies in the hands of the working class – and not just of the occupied territories, but of Israel’s entire war machine and oppressive apparatus.
Dockworkers in France, Italy and Greece have already shown the way by refusing to handle murderous cargo bound for Israel on several occasions. Tech workers should fight to tear up contracts with the war machine, students for a full boycott in their universities, and unions organise and take militant action.
Ireland is one of Israel’s largest trading partners. We can inflict a significant dent on the IDF’s genocidal campaign. A militant struggle in the workplace can force a full boycott of Israel’s war machine, like it did for Apartheid in South Africa.
Ireland’s history shows that change has never come as a gift from the ruling class, but through struggle against it from below. Ultimately, the fight for free Palestine is part of a wider struggle – against imperialism, against the domination of Washington and Brussels over our economy and politics, and for a society built around human need rather than profit. In a word, a fight for communism!
