Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign

The people of Cork working towards a Free Palestine

Latest News, Events, and Protests

February 6, 2026
A graphic for CPSC weekly march with time of 1pm at the Grand Parade Cork on February 7th, 2026. The image is of a stylised map of Palestine wrapped in a keffiyeh to like like a head and neck
News round up
All eyes on Palestine.

This week, the Epstein files have further exposed the rot at the heart of capitalist power and the protection afforded to the world’s most violent actors. What has been disclosed is not a distraction but an addition, a brutal reminder of how corruption, blackmail and political shielding operate at the highest levels. Israel has long benefited from this same culture of impunity.

As these revelations come to light, Israel has taken the opportunity to escalate the bombing of Gaza. This week, many more innocent, exhausted families were murdered by US backed Israel while confined to less than 45 percent of Gaza’s land. 

In the West Bank Palestinians are suffering genocide at a different pace. Israel is sponsoring a settler expansion. Settlers are given favourable mortgages and grants to move to the West Bank, where they attack, intimidate and drive Palestinians from their homes while under the protection of the army. The colonisers are issuing demolition orders on a vast number of homes. Simultaneously the IOF are blocking roads, locking people in or out with large gates. They regularly raid towns, villages, and camps where men, women, and children are abducted from the streets and incarcerated without trial or charge in Israeli torture chambers. This week an eight-month-old baby died of suffocation from Israeli tear gas in Al-Aroub camp, north of Hebron. 
Irish people understand that this is life  under occupation, we have been imploring the Irish government to stand up against this brutal apartheid system for years now. However in January Helen McEntee visited both Jordan and Egypt, she was less than fifty miles from the Occupied Territories. Why didn’t she visit? Was she afraid that seeing the blatant apartheid with her own eyes would destroy her plausible deniability? Could she still justify Ireland being second largest supporter of the Israeli economy, regardless of how we cherish the US? 
Stand with us and the people of Palestine this Saturday at 1.00 on Grand Parade.
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The Wanted 18
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The Wanted 18 will be shown on Monday 9th February at 6:30pm in Aras Na Laoi G.30, University College Cork.  
 
An animated documentary about the efforts of Palestinians from Beit Sahour in the Bethlehem Area to start a small diary industry during the First Intifada, and their efforts to hide a herd of 18 cows from Israeli Security Forces, who considered them a threat to Israel’s national security. 
 
Please register below for this FREE event to make sure you get a seat.
TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mONajtQX-3M  
FREE EVENT – registration required to guarantee seat.
 
European Citizens’ Initiative to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement
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EU Citizens’ Initiative campaign
The IPSC is backing the campaign to get 1,000,000 signatures on this initiative to abolish the EU-Israel Association Agreement: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#/screen/home. Please share the attached graphic and the text below on your socials and in your networks.
 
“As the Genocide continues in Palestine, more than 300,000 people across Europe have already signed the EU Citizens’ Initiative to kick apartheid Israel out of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. If we reach 1 million signatures, we’ll force the EU Commission to debate the proposal. Will you take two minutes to add your name? Sign here: https://ipsc.ie/eci
 
Israeli Apartheid Week, 21st-28th March
The BDS National Committee has announced the dates for the 21st Israeli Apartheid Week. Details of the call can be found here: https://bdsmovement.net/iaw. Branches are encouraged to plan events and actions during these dates. As always, please send details of your events to info@ipsc.ie for inclusion on the website.
 
National Committee meeting, Sunday 8th February
As a reminder, the next national committee meeting will take place via Zoom at 11am on Sunday 8th February, and branches are strongly encouraged to send a representative. Thank you to all branches who have informed me about their rep; if you haven’t done so already, please send me your rep’s contact details. If you have any agenda requests, please send them to me by Monday 2nd February.
 
National Demonstration for Palestine, Saturday 21st February
The next National Demonstration for Palestine will take place on Saturday 21st February in Dublin. As this will be the first national march of 2026, we are really encouraging our branches to mobilise people to come to Dublin for it. It’s especially important as the issue of Palestine continues to slide off the media and political agenda, with the non-existent ‘ceasefire’ being used to gaslight people into thinking the genocide is over and a ‘peace process’ is underway.
 
 
The NCAG: Gaza’s Technocratic Turn to Genocide Management
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The announcement of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a 15-member technocratic body chaired by Ali Shaath, signals a shift toward depoliticized governance in Gaza amid ongoing genocide. Shaath, a Palestinian civil engineer and former deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, will lead an interim governing structure tasked with managing reconstruction and service provision under external oversight. While presented as a neutral technocratic governing structure, the NCAG is more likely to function as a managerial apparatus that stabilizes conditions that enable genocide rather than challenging them.
This policy memo argues that technocratic governance in Gaza—particularly under US oversight, given its role as a co-perpetrator in the genocide—should be understood not as a pathway to recovery or sovereignty, but as part of a broader strategy of genocide management.
 
From Trōcaire: 
Minister McEntee, Pass the Occupied Territories Bill!
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Protesters hold a sign reading ‘Pass the Occupied Territories Bill’ during a demonstration for Palestine in Dublin. Photo: Garry Walsh/Trócaire
We’ve a new Minister, but the same problem – a government dragging its heels on the Occupied Territories Bill.
 
Help ensure the new Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Helen McEntee, gets a clear and urgent message: pass the Occupied Territories Bill, including services, before the end of the year!
 
Despite a fragile and unreliable ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinians living there continue to face violence, and a dire humanitarian crisis. Gaza’s health system has been decimated, and much of the population has been weakened by months of starvation. Across the West Bank, Palestinians face a system of apartheid and ongoing dispossession of their homes and land.
It’s essential therefore that Ireland acts without further delays. The people of Palestine cannot wait another year. We need to make passing the Occupied Territories Bill the top priority for the new Minister.
 
Let your TDs know, right now, that you want action. Urge them to put pressure on Minister McEntee to pass the Bill, including services, this year.
Please take action now. Simply select your constituency, fill in your details and press send. The pre-written email below will be sent to your TDs.
 
 
CPSC 2026 Calendar is now available for purchase
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Make sure to grab a CPSC 2026 calendar from the rally or the Quay Coop this Saturday. 
 
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As the New Year begins, Palestine faces one of the most dangerous moments in our history. In Gaza, our people face and resist ongoing genocide, starvation, siege, and mass destruction — now compounded by a US-Israeli colonial plan to impose illegal foreign control and a post-genocide order without justice or accountability. Across the West Bank, raids, mass arrests, and settler militias acting with impunity continue to terrorize communities and displace families off their land.

Normalization with despotic Arab regimes, under these circumstances, can only be perceived as a “reward” for genocidal Israel, and instead of sanctions and accountability, governments rush to rehabilitate a rogue apartheid state.

As part of their desperate attempts to rehabilitate Israel’s genocidal regime in a world that has largely isolated it, the US and Europe are escalating their authoritarian repression against the global solidarity networks, led by the BDS movement and its Palestinian leadership. From FIFA to Eurovision to other “international” forums that they dominate, they are destroying what is left of international law’s credibility to save their favorite settler-colony.

And yet, despite everything, this year unveiled something powerful: people power works. Millions rose up worldwide. BDS campaigns convinced trade unions, churches, universities, artists, and even some corporations to distance themselves from apartheid. Israel’s impunity is gradually cracking in unprecedented ways.

This is the moment to hold the line, and push harder. 

We cannot allow genocide, colonization, foreign control, and normalization to dictate our future.

That is why I’m asking you — urgently and from a place of shared struggle — to stand with us now. 

In the BDS movement, we continue to channel our grief and rage into principled and strategic energy to end the genocide, dismantle settler-colonialism and apartheid, and hold all perpetrators and enablers accountable. Your support powers our most impactful efforts:

Stopping arms shipments and military cooperation with Israel. 

Challenging complicit corporations.

Mobilizing unions, students, churches, and institutions to end complicity and divest.

Supporting global organizing to isolate apartheid and stop normalization. 

This work is strategic, coordinated, and effective — but it can only continue with your solidarity. Your contribution builds the pressure needed to defend our people’s rights and move us closer to freedom, justice, and equality.
 
ViEW THE BDS MAP IN CORK
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BDS CORK: Here are just SOME of the businesses who have joined the 🔗Apartheid Free Zone in Cork THIS WEEK!
 
  • Earthway Refill, Midleton
  • Well and Good, Midleton
  • Salina’s Bistro, Midleton
 
 
Activists have been out speaking to businesses recently and are signing people up, one business at a time. If you have a business, the first step is super easy: signing up. If you want to chat about signing up, please email the BDS group at 📧CORKBDS@PROTON.ME to speak to an Apartheid Free Zone organiser or 🔗 sign up here
 
The BDS group made a presentation on AFZ for groups around the country in late 2025. You can view the recording 👉 here. 
 
And the slides 👉 here. 
 
Lapwing and Sunbird cycling club is open for membership
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The Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign is delighted to announce that the Lapwing and Sunbird cycling club is open for membership for those interested. 
 
The Sunbird is the national bird of Palestine and was adopted by the Gaza Sunbirds as a proud and peaceful emblem for their paralympic cycling team. In similar fashion we have adopted the national bird of Ireland, the Lapwing, along with the Sunbird as the logo for our club which aims to raise awareness of the Palestinians’ plight for justice and freedom. For further information please find a link below to the website for Cycle for Palestine Ireland. 
Saoirse don Phalaistín.
 
Palestiniangenocide.org
a resource to see bds enacted in the workplace
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This organisation (link here) extensively profiles companies complicit in the genocide and provides template letters to send to decision-makers, spelling out specific business risks and arguing to break ties with these companies. Alternatives are also listed. A helpful resource for those fighting to see BDS enacted, particularly in their workplace ! 
 
Updates from Palestine
Days 112-114 “Ceasefire” – Days 847-848
  • Rafah crossing set to open Sunday (Feb 1), only limited medical cases allowed to leave & no aid will enter.
  • IOF escalates attacks on Saturday, killing 31+ Palestinians incl. 6 kids — targeted Sheikh Radwan police HQ massacring 16+ people incl. 5 police officers; airstrike targeted tent in al-Mawasi killing 7 family members incl. 3 kids; airstrike on apartment building in Rimal (Gaza City) killed 5 people incl. 3 kids; shot & killed 1 person in Jabalia.
  • IOF returned bodies of 15 Palestinian hostages to Gaza in exchange for last body of Israeli hostage.
  • South Africa declared high-ranking Israeli diplomat a persona non grata, ordering him to leave country w/in 72 hrs.
  • MSF: will not disclose personal details of Palestinian staff to Israel, following Oxfam’s decision.
  • IOF drone strike on car in south Lebanon killed 1 person

    West Bank:

  • IOF stormed Jalazone camp sparking clashes, shot & injured a 15 & 16 y/o; shot & injured a 17 y/o amid raid on Hebron; assaulted & injured 2 people in Yabrud.
  • IOF military jeep ran over a 30 y/o in Nablus, injuring him.
  • Settlers attacked bedouin communities in Jerusalem & Jordan Valley, set fire to homes; IOF-backed settlers beat a man near Nablus, clashed w/ Palestinians, & destroyed crops + irrigation project.