Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.

This is a guest post from Fiachra O'Luain.

As somebody who gave evidence to the UN Panel of Inquiry/Palmer Report, I am requesting that the Irish as well as other European and international governments refuse to recognise the Palmer Report as a genuine investigation. I beseech Europeans to demand of their government that the UNHRC report be acknowledged as the only genuine investigation to date. Messrs. Palmer, Uribe and Trimble have only implicated themselves in the 21st century equivalent of the Widgery Report of the Bloody Sunday massacre and shame on any lawmaker who accepts the false premise that the siege of Gaza is or ever was legal.

This cynical Palmer Report is based on the idea the most important outcome would be that Israel and Turkey kiss and make up as 18 months should have been enough to make most of us forget what really happened. It is also designed to condition people into accepting the illegal and immoral siege of Gaza as something that is inevitable. This contradicts reality and without speaking for anybody else, not 18 months nor 18 years will not make me forget what I survived and witnessed with my own eyes.

I saw Israeli helicopters and gun-boats fire on the Mavi Marmara before a single commando fast-roped down onto the deck. For me it is apparent that the Israeli government ordered their commandos to carry out a murder mission on the "most Muslim ship" as the only way of discouraging future flotillas from reaffirming Palestine's right to legal maritime aid and trade.

Therefore, as a former candidate in the 2009 European elections, I request that the EU make funds available for Gaza to expand its port to more fully participate in the existing trade agreements between the EU and Palestine. I request that my current MEPs agitate that current Trade agreements with Israel should be suspended until this work is completed and the siege of Gaza is lifted.

The people of my adolescent hometown of Derry waited 40 years for something resembling justice after Bloody Sunday. In Derry's Guildhall Square, less than a fortnight after our release from Israeli abduction, I finally witnessed a British Prime Minister apologise for the atrocities that have scarred Ireland for more than a generation. Therefore I would like to take this opportunity to tell the people of Palestine that their day will also come. One day Israel will apologise, not to Turkey, but to Palestine. In the meantime Palestinians will never be alone in their search for equality and just nationhood.