How to Understand Ireland’s Journey in Supporting Palestinian Statehood

Azure Forum Strategic Insight 017/2024

By Vincent Durac, Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin

On May 28 of this year, the Irish government formally recognised the state of Palestine and agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with Ramallah. Earlier, in March, Micheál Martin, the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs announced that he had directed officials to commence work on a ‘Declaration of Intervention’ in the case taken by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), asking the court to consider whether Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the context of the current war in Gaza which followed the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. The Minister added that while it is up to the ICJ to adjudicate on whether or not genocide is being committed, he wanted to be clear that the attacks by Hamas and subsequent events in Gaza represented the ‘blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale’. All of this constitutes part of a broader pattern.