Gaza campaigners to hold their 100th rally in Cork

At lunchtime today, the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign (CPSC) will hold its 100th consecutive weekly city centre rally in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

There has been a rally in Cork every week since the latest and bloodiest round of the decades-long conflict in the Middle East erupted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-backed insurgents murdered some 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 hostages.

Since then, the death toll caused by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacks on Gaza has now passed 64,000, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry (GHM),

Last month, the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially declared famine in Gaza City.

For more than a year, aid groups had been warning that Israel’s military offensive, and its restrictions of food and other aid into Gaza, were causing high levels of starvation among Palestinian civilians, particularly children.

Now, according to the IPC, a quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza, more than 500,000 people, are starving, with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within weeks.

Reacting to the IPC determination, Taoiseach Micheál Martin called Israel’s ongoing blockade of food and aid into Gaza a “war crime”, saying famine in Gaza had been “both entirely predictable and preventable”.

In May, Mr Martin described in the Dáil Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, predicting that its blockade of humanitarian aid was pushing the Gaza Strip toward a hunger crisis.

As of Thursday, at least 370 people have died from starvation, including 131 children, the GHM has said.

On Thursday, an Israeli military spokesman said the IDF now controls some 40% of Gaza City, with advancing forces now only kilometres from the ruined city centre.

Thousands of residents, many of them starving, have defied Israeli orders to leave Gaza City, where health authorities said IDF fire had killed at least 53 people over the past two days.

This week’s CPSC will assemble on the Grand Parade, outside the Terence MacSwiney City Library, at 1pm on Saturday, with people from across the county expected to attend.