Appalled – but who isn’t? – at the latest killings in Gaza, President Higgins declared: “The outrageous level of killing (by Israel) must end with an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and the immediate provision of all necessary aid.”
Sorry, was there overnight a constitutional coup that no-one told us about, ie, so that foreign policy decisions are now made in the Aras, and not Iveagh House? That the Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin later concurred with the President’s sequencing of events is irrelevant. Foreign policy is not the President’s affair. And according to their common prescript, a ceasefire will be followed by a release of hostages. But why? There was a ceasefire in November. The Israelis got eleven of their hostages back in exchange for 33 Palestinian prisoners before Hamas resumed hostilities by firing rockets into Israel.
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