The Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine
The Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine (IAAC-P) is a coalition of 23 Irish civil society organisations representing a collective membership of over one million people across the island.
We mourn, without reservation, the taking of all civilian life, in Gaza, in Israel and across the occupied Palestinian territory; and we condemn all unlawful acts which deliberately target or recklessly endanger civilians, including all acts of collective punishment against a population under siege.
We also make an urgent call for an immediate ceasefire by all parties in the occupied Gaza Strip and Israel to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid for people in Gaza amidst an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
Drawing on evidence gathered over decades by the United Nations and international and local human rights organisations, it is recognised that Israel imposes an institutionalised regime of oppression, discrimination and domination over Palestinians across all the territory under its effective control, between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, and among Palestinian refugees. This is apartheid, and it is a crime against humanity in international law.
Since 1948 millions of Palestinians have been forcibly removed and transferred; they have had their lands confiscated and their homes demolished; they have been imprisoned without trial, and forced to live in isolated and fragmented enclaves with limited freedom of movement.
Successive Israeli governments have transferred more than 700,000 settlers onto occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and have created separate legal and administrative systems for Palestinians and Israelis. They have also denied nationality and citizenship to millions of Palestinians.
Gaza is the most extreme manifestation of Israel’s apartheid regime of racial domination, territorial fragmentation, forcible transfer, segregation and exclusion. The international community, particularly the United States and the European Union, has failed over decades to provide the Palestinian people with a genuine path to justice and equality.
The near-total support for Israel and its policies has been disastrous for Palestinians, and indeed for Israelis. It is time for honesty: we must no longer enable the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinian people. Those with the power to do so must, instead, and as a matter of urgency, create a political process leading to an end to decades of injustice and violence which has been imposed on the Palestinian people.
In the current crisis, we call on the Government to redouble its efforts to bring an end to war in Gaza. We call on our representatives to stand by the Secretary General of the United Nations in his recognition of the root causes of the current conflict; we call on them to ensure the International Criminal Court investigates as a matter of urgency all potential war crimes arising from the current hostilities; and more immediately to facilitate the urgent delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid to the besieged population of Gaza.
Beyond this, every effort must be made to seek a long-term political solution for Palestinians and Israelis. Anything less will only lead to constant war and the ongoing destabilisation of an entire region. The Palestinian people have endured decades of suffering. We must not continue to fail them.
Peace, for Palestinians and Israelis, is only possible through justice for the Palestinian people.
October 27th 2023
To call on the Irish Government to recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and to take meaningful action to dismantle this apartheid system.
In November a group of civil society organisations came together to establish the Irish Anti-Apartheid for Palestine (IAAC-P). There are now more than twenty groups affiliated to the campaign with more coming on board in the coming months. The campaign is endorsed by the principal Palestinian civil society networks. New members since the launch in November are the Bloody Sunday Trust in Derry, and the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The IAAC-P will launch a campaign to enhance public awareness of Israel’s apartheid regime around the 75th anniversary of the Nakba on 15th May.
We are campaigning to persuade the Irish government to officially recognise Israel’s system of apartheid, and to take meaningful action internationally, at the bilateral and multilateral level, to demand an end to it.
Show your support and call on the Irish Government to recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid and to take meaningful action to dismantle this apartheid system
The Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine
Over the last year, SADAKA has been working with others to form a broad coalition of civil society organisations, trade unions and academic experts to work together. The new Irish Anti-Apartheid Coalition for Palestine was launched on November 30th 2022 in Dublin.
Through shared actions, campaigns and advocacy initiatives, the Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine has pledged to engage members of the Irish public and political representatives on the situation of Palestinians, and to build political support for effective measures by Ireland and the international community to condemn Israel’s settler-colonial regime and to end the crime of apartheid. In particular, it calls on Ireland and the international community to publicly recognise that the State of Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people and to take concrete measures to end this crime against humanity.
“I fully support the launch of this Ireland-Palestine anti-apartheid campaign. I hoped, after South Africa, that the world was finished with apartheid. Unfortunately, and sadly, that is not the case. Apartheid was not acceptable to the Irish people in the 1980s when we made our stand and it is not acceptable to them in 2022.”
- Mary Manning, the first Dunnes Stores worker to refuse to handle apartheid South Africa’s fruit in July 1984.
Speaking at the launch of the coalition, Senator Frances Black stated, “Ireland has a proud history of challenging apartheid in South Africa and Namibia. The coalition will draw on the rich vein of individual activism, public advocacy and political action in Ireland in the 1980s that was so successful in drawing international attention to the situation there and that ultimately helped bring about an end to the South African apartheid regime.”
And so, in January 2023 we began a series of actions to raise awareness on these issues and leave no doubt in the minds of our public representatives that this is an issue that their constituents want them to act on. If you would like to become involved in this work in your city, town, constituency or county, please contact us at newsletter@sadaka.ie and we will keep you informed as the plans develop.
Read More
Read the Press Release of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine.
Read an open letter, signed by members of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine, in the Irish Times.
Learn more of the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Campaign, and its request to support efforts at the UN to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid to investigate Israeli apartheid.
groups have joined the
The Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign for Palestine
These include:
- Academics for Palestine
- Afri (Action from Ireland)
- Action Aid Ireland
- Amnesty International
- Bloody Sunday Trust
- Centre for Global Education
- Comhlámh
- Comhlámh Justice for Palestine
- Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign
- Frances Black Rise Foundation
- Gaza Action Ireland
- Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)
- Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
- Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU)
- Irish Council for Civil Liberties
- Jews for Palestine
- Kairos Ireland
- Sadaka - The Ireland Palestine Alliance
- SIPTU
- TCD BDS
- Trade Union Friends of Palestine
- Trócaire