LIMERICK will raise the flag of solidarity as part of an international delegation travelling to Cairo to join the Global March to Gaza.
The peaceful initiative is calling for immediate humanitarian access to the region.
The Irish group, which includes more than 40 people from across the country, will converge in Cairo before marching across the Sinai Desert to the Rafah border crossing.
“Over the course of 2–3 days, we’ll walk in solidarity toward Rafah,” the website says.
The demonstrators have said they do not plan to try and enter Gaza and will camp at the border for three days before returning to Cairo on June 19.
Among them are Limerick-born and based participants, all who feel “a deep moral duty to act”.
“I feel morally compelled to go to Gaza,” said one Limerick woman set to make the mammoth journey.
“It almost feels instinctive, I can no longer sit at home and watch a genocide live-streamed to the world. It’s about standing up against cruelty, starvation, and murder that is happening on a level I can barely comprehend.”
The Limerick woman said that “the number of children killed is particularly harrowing for me to digest”.
“In the space of 19 months, Israel has murdered what would equate to the majority of the children in Limerick City, with all of those who remained being orphaned or maimed. That’s just an unimaginable amount of suffering by innocent children.”
Another Limerick woman taking part in the march said that her family is “a bit nervous” about her joining the walk, “but they fully support this movement”.
“We’ve all watched this horror unfold for over a year and a half and done everything we can to help people directly. We’ve donated, we’ve done all the actions, written to government, taken part in protests, but there comes a point where you realise its falling on deaf ears, the government is not doing enough, our politicians are failing.”
Others travelling from Limerick include a PhD researcher at the University of Limerick, who said: “I have lost any confidence in our governments and the European Union to take meaningful actions to stop this genocide and to hold Israel accountable for the injustices and the unspeakable crimes that the Palestinian people are being subjected to.”
“I now believe that only citizens’ mass mobilisation can turn the tide.
“This will be the greatest commitment that I have ever made in my life, and I am doing it because I believe this is my duty as a citizen. I feel empowered by the support of my local community here in Limerick.”
The UL researcher said that “one of my siblings is worried, and I’ve been trying to reassure them that we are doing it for all of us and that the best they can do to protect us is to speak against this genocide”.
The Irish contingent is part of a global movement of people from over 50 countries calling for the permanent opening of the Rafah crossing for humanitarian aid, an immediate end to the Israeli military occupation of Gaza, internationally supported reconstruction efforts, and a full stop to the colonisation of Palestine.
While people in the group acknowledge the risks of their voyage, they emphasised what they describe as the “greater moral risk of inaction”.
“Every day children are bombed and starved. How could we not go?”
