Northern Ireland to boycott White House event over Trump’s Gaza plan
Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill says she will not attend St Patrick’s Day events at the White House in protest against US President Donald Trump’s position on Gaza.
Political leaders from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland usually travel to the US for the annual religious and cultural holiday on March 17.
“We are all heartbroken as we witness the suffering of the Palestinian people and the recent comments of the US president around the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza, something I cannot ignore,” O’Neill said at a joint news conference in Dublin alongside the leader of her Sinn Fein party, Mary Lou McDonald.
On her part, McDonald said: “There is an onus on us to act when we believe the US administration is wrong, catastrophically so in the case of Palestine.”
Ireland is sending Prime Minister Micheal Martin to the White House celebrations. Martin said this month that he would raise “a broad range of issues” with the US president.
No sign Israel will fulfil humanitarian obligations of Gaza ceasefire deal
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel must fulfil its obligations by allowing for enough heavy machinery and mobile shelters to enter the Gaza Strip, but what has been sent to the Strip is a fraction of the massive needs of Gaza’s displaced population.
We understand that only 12 caravans were sent to UNICEF, one of the United Nations’ key agencies, and apparently no … mobile shelters have entered Gaza so far from Rafah or from the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.
These would help mitigate the developing humanitarian crisis, as families in the north struggle to cope with the harsh weather conditions after having been left homeless and forced to live in the ruins of their destroyed homes.
It is thought these mobile shelters will help accommodate hundreds of thousands of families and will enable longterm recovery efforts inside the territory. Israel has not given any sort of serious indication about its commitment to implement the humanitarian protocol of the deal.
Which may in turn threaten the stability of the ceasefire agreement, expanding the gap between Hamas and Israel regarding the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, even as regional mediators are trying to exert pressure on both parties to bring sustainable peace.
Fate of Gaza ceasefire deal’s second phase depends on US
Israeli author and columnist Gideon Levy has told Al Jazeera that he is not concerned that the ceasefire deal will jeopardise tomorrow’s planned captives-prisoners exchange after Israeli claims that one of the bodies returned on Thursday was not that of the female captive Shiri Bibas.
“First of all, we have to go through the phase of tomorrow, which is a critical one because it’s about six living hostages getting back home. Israel will not do anything before this.”
After Saturday, the future looks “very vague because if it depends on Israel, there will be no second phase, and it all depends on the Americans”, he said.
“If the Americans will be devoted enough, there will be another phase. If not, there will not be another phase,” Levy said.
“It has very to do with returning one body or the other; Israel is obviously [making] a big fuss about this … by the end of the day, this cannot change agreements,” he said, adding that he hoped the US will “force” Netanyahu to pursue a second phase.
