After two years of relentless genocidal bombardment, starvation and murder in Gaza, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a fragile and largely one-sided ceasefire during which Israel has continued bombing Gaza City and Khan Younis.
Trump’s plan is not a peace plan; it is a plan to consolidate imperialist power in the Middle East. This is evidenced by the grossly exploitative terms of the plan. Palestinian voices were left out and Hamas was denied any role, “directly or indirectly”, in the future governance of Gaza. The question of Palestinian statehood is side-stepped, and Palestinians are encouraged to ‘voluntarily’ leave. There is no timeline or detail on Israeli withdrawal, just that Gaza is to become “a de-radicalized terror-free zone” with a multinational stabilisation force, made up of troops provided by the Arab regimes. The inclusion of Arab regimes in the administration of Gaza speaks to the resumption of the normalisation process, which was halted by the genocide. Gaza’s governance will be passed to a temporary transitional body, a “technocratic and apolitical Palestinian committee,” overseen by an international ‘Board of Peace.’ Trump himself would head the latter, alongside – unbelievably – Tony Blair. While the respite from constant destruction is undoubtedly a relief for the surviving Gazans, the “ceasefire” presents a challenge for the solidarity movement.
Without adequate political education, the risk exists that activists who were politicised and mobilised by the horrors of this second Nakba will think that the job is done. However, this could not be further from the truth.
This moment also presents a golden opportunity – for two years, we have seen the largest global mobilisation for Palestine in history. An entire generation has been politicised against Israel. For the majority of young people around the world, Zionism has lost all legitimacy. The urgent question is: how can we convert this anti-war movement into an anti-imperialist movement capable of dismantling Zionism completely?
Where we are
The Palestine solidarity movement in Ireland and internationally has always been dynamic, with a multiplicity of tactics employed by different groups. The dominant layers tend to be large, NGO-like organisations such as the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), and its counterpart in the UK. These elements are capable of funding and organising large mobilisations, in the order of tens or hundreds of thousands, but often strategic goals for the movement are not clear. In contrast small groups of militant activists have, at various times in the history of the movement, taken ‘direct action’ against targets such as weapons factories or military planes. This layer has become increasingly prominent, especially with the consistent campaign to disrupt Elbit Systems by Palestine Action in the UK. Palestine Action UK has inspired the creation of Palestine Action Éire, establishing a centre of militant direct action in Ireland.
Students form their own layer, participating in a range of actions on campus. Localised BDS groups, structured organisations like Students for Justice in Palestine in the US and Palestine Youth Movement internationally have long engaged in educational campaigns, protests, and efforts to secure divestment agreements from their universities. This strategy evolved tactically last year with the emergence of student encampments around the world, creating a global network of solidarity and spontaneous coordination of action. The encampments resulted in varying degrees of repression and success. Notably, in Ireland, the encampment in Trinity College Dublin won a divestment agreement from the university in a matter of days.
The global solidarity movement has also seen an increase in attention and participation. During the summer, two impressive actions brought together activists from around the world. The Global March to Gaza in June saw American, European, and Asian activists converge on Cairo. They attempted to march to the Rafah border crossing with Gaza and demand that it be opened to allow life-saving aid to cross into the strip. This effort was joined by the Sumud Convoy beginning in Algeria and gaining momentum across the Maghreb as it approached Egypt. Recently, the largest ever flotilla trying to break Israel’s illegal naval blockade of Gaza coordinated hundreds of international activists in nearly 50 vessels. Both efforts received enormous attention on social and mainstream media. Both were also met with heavy repression by the complicit Sisi regime in Egypt in the case of the Global March to Gaza and by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the case of the Global Sumud Flotilla. The magnitude and cruelty of the repression faced by peaceful activists elicited significant outcry from the public, but little response from states whose citizens were abducted and mistreated.
Immediately before the announcement of a ceasefire, the energy in the movement was at a peak. An estimated 25,000 people attended the national IPSC march on the 4th of October. This marked one of the largest marches in recent months. Similar mobilisations occurred during the same week in London, Barcelona, and Rome. General strikes in solidarity with Palestine and the flotilla activists rocked Italy. On the 15th of October, a day of general strikes planned before the ceasefire announcement went ahead in Spain.
This energy also expresses itself in anger and a desire for militancy or ‘disruption.’ Recently, hundreds of activists in the Netherlands blocked Rotterdam port for hours, inspired by Italian dock workers’ strike action for Palestine. In Ireland, a growing segment of the movement has become frustrated with the IPSC’s rigidity and seeks a new direction. On the same date as the last IPSC national demonstration, the 4th of October, a spontaneous gathering led by students and militant elements marched to Dublin Port. The march was an attempt to repeat a sit-in that occurred on the previous Thursday, which blocked traffic through the economic hub for several hours. This attempt was preempted by Public Order units of the Gardaí, who wasted no time beating protesters with batons and using pepper spray, considered a weapon by Irish law and prohibited to civilians, to disperse the crowd.
All elements of the movement want peace and freedom for Palestine. However, the nature of their demands and the tactics employed vary significantly. What can be said without a doubt is that there is an unprecedented pool of people and fervour in the fight. To fully realise the potential of this growth in the movement, we must make a careful analysis of the politics and strategies capable of delivering an end to the occupation of Palestine.
Politics
Solidarity with Palestine has reached a breadth never seen before. To win liberation, this solidarity must deepen its politics. For decades, the Palestine solidarity movement swelled periodically in reaction to atrocities committed by Israel. Recent peaks of solidarity mobilisations occurred during a largely one-sided conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas in Gaza in 2014, the mass slaughter of peaceful protesters in the 2018 Great March of Return, the attempted eviction of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem in 2021, and after the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022.
In this mode of reaction, the movement was not able to develop a politics that sustained it. The largest portion of the movement, following more liberal formations like the IPSC, expressed humanitarian concern at the specific aggressions and disproportion of the violence committed by Israel. Among this layer, the legitimacy of Zionism was rarely challenged. Pro-Palestine activism based entirely on humanitarian concern does not typically understand that the inherent logic and natural conclusion of the Zionist project is genocidal.
On the other hand, small-cell organisations on the ground and individuals on the internet have periodically felt emboldened to romanticise armed resistance groups in Palestine, waving flags from PFLP, Hamas, or Hezbollah, sometimes to the point of caricature. In the landscape of tenuous humanitarian concern for Palestine, in which the largest layers of the movement have conceded to Israel’s ‘right to exist,’ such expressions naturally found little purchase. Similarly, in this environment, the consistent and nuanced politics of revolutionary socialist and other radical groups, including People Before Profit and the Socialist Workers Network, also found small audiences.
However, things have changed. Since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, social media has made the voices of Palestinians easier to access. Public intellectuals such as Mohammad El Kurd and on-the-ground journalists such as Bisan Owda, Plestia Alaqad, and the recently murdered Saleh al-Jafawari have been able to speak directly to audiences in Europe and the US via Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Tik Tok. These speakers are obviously critical of Zionism and their words and analysis, whether received directly or transplanted into infographics, have spread widely. Now, for the first time, mainstream elements of the movement are comfortable labelling Zionism as a ‘colonial project’ which inherently aspires to control all of Palestine. The analysis that Israel’s carving up of Palestine constitutes apartheid is now also mainstream.
This framing marks a paradigm shift in the overall politics of the movement. It is no longer spoken about as a complex, inevitable conflict between religions. Now, it is common to hear people lay the blame for violence entirely at the feet of Zionism’s expansionist apartheid. The next step is to mainstream the only just solution for Palestine: a single democratic state to which all displaced Palestinians have the right of return and whose destiny is decided by the Palestinian working class, not Zionist elements nor the collaborationist Palestinian Authority.
While this has long been the position of revolutionary socialists and others on the radical left, the largest layers of the movement are not yet comfortable declaring that the only solution for Palestine is the complete dissolution of the State of Israel. In the new landscape, this seems possible for the first time. Since the genocide in Gaza began, the movement has grown exponentially, sustained an unseen level of activity, and accepted explicitly anti-colonial rhetoric and theory about Palestine.
We believe that one of our primary tasks in this movement is to continue its political development until it reaches radical and anti-imperialist conclusions. We should ensure that every leaflet, pamphlet, and speech contains explicit calls for the dismantlement of the Zionist state. We should take every opportunity to explain why this is necessary – that the nature of Zionism does not and has never allowed for the peaceful existence of Palestine – and that it has nothing to do with anti-semitism. There is nothing inevitable about Arabs and Jews being enemies: the racist division arose through the partition of historic Palestine, enabled by the British and the imperialist powers.
Strategy
It is clear that the movement needs to sharpen its politics. However, whenever the occasion arises to do so, elements that see themselves as more ‘militant’ or ‘serious’ use moralist arguments to dissuade people from taking the time for political education and strategising. At the other extreme, groups unwilling to fundamentally challenge the status quo condemn the injection of ‘politics’ into a movement that they believe should be humanitarian exclusively.
Masses of people are breaking away from the liberal dominance of the last decades. There is a growing desire for ‘radical action’ and a growing awareness, as discussed above, of the need to end the apartheid. This rising consciousness has the potential to develop into the kind of movement that defeated apartheid in South Africa. However, without the proper strategy, it may also be wasted.
Each extreme of the movement – liberal pacifist concern on the one end and moralistic adventurism on the other – has significant drawbacks, and neither can deliver the pressure needed to win. Mass marches without radical demands are largely toothless. Disorganised militancy cannot overwhelm police repression, and is rapidly depleted through meaningless arrests and burnout. Excessive security culture verging on paranoia arises from these groups’ focus on ‘clandestine’ or ‘disruptive’ actions. The constant suspicion acts as a barrier to entry, preventing such groups from replenishing their ranks and mobilising the masses. The extant formations of the Palestine solidarity movement, therefore, suffer a vacuum of political organisation and a scarcity of durable strategy.
This is precisely why organised parties and disciplined forces matter to provide political clarity and strategic coherence: to convert outrage into active campaigns, sympathy into sanctions, and marches into ruptures in the political and economic status quo. People Before Profit and allied socialist organisations have shown at times how to turn mass anger into coordinated pressure: instigating the Expel the Israeli Ambassador campaign, calling on TDs to boycott the annual White House (US) visit, the recent effort by Gerry Carroll in the North to bring a No Confidence motion in the DUP education minister for his disgraceful propaganda trip to Israel, and supporting nascent campus and workplace mobilisations. That must scale up and evolve.
Socialists are positioned to lead this movement. Anti-imperialism is baked into socialism, and it guides us to understand the need for a fully liberated Palestine. This same analysis concludes that neither the disabling of a few weapons manufacturing facilities nor individual boycott campaigns can leverage the level of pressure needed to isolate the Zionist state. While these actions have been important to build the popularity of the solidarity movement and have achieved modest wins, we have learned over the past two years of relentless genocide that they are not enough. Activists must force their own governments to take action against Israel and cut all ties with this genocidal regime, which means that the pressure created by activists must exceed the pressure of Western imperialism. This, of course, is no easy feat.
Workplace action
Recent developments in the global movement have opened avenues of resistance with greater potential: namely, workplace action. General strikes in Italy and Spain, motivated by the brutalisation of the Global Sumud Flotilla activists, have inspired activists in Ireland. Excitement tends to breed impatience, and some activists have already begun demanding that a general strike in Ireland be organised immediately. Without the materialisation of general strikes, or a plan to get there, these same activists may soon move on to the next idea. Thus, this surge of interest in workplace activism is an opportunity for leadership from socialists who have the knowledge of history and politics to build and sustain a workers’ movement.
Of course, it is not possible to organise an effective general strike at the drop of a hat. The impressive recent strike wave in Italy was not called one day and enacted the next. Rather, the October 2025 strikes were preceded by months of smaller strikes, internal division within the movement, and work to build a united front. Further, Italian trade unionism benefits from a long history of militancy, in which education in the political role of trade unions is the norm. No such history exists for the largely obstructionist trade union bureaucracy in Ireland. Additionally, trade unionism in Ireland faces legal repression in the form of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act which, among other things, forbids political strikes.
Ireland does have a proud history of labour action to further left-wing aims. James Connolly and Jim Larkin’s One Big Union was an important force in the fight against British occupation of the island. More recently, the legendary Dunnes Stores strikers were among the first workers to oppose apartheid South Africa in their workplaces. However, this oft-cited history sometimes glosses over the arduous process of building mass industrial action. The Dunnes Stores strikes began with a mere ten individuals. Nine months into the two-year strike, their number was eleven. Eventually, these workers’ staunch refusal to handle apartheid South African goods brought the weight of the unions to bear and the government was forced to sanction the apartheid regime. It worked, but it took time.
A new initiative in Ireland shows promise. Seizing on the moment of interest in labour activism, Healthcare Workers for Palestine called for workers around Ireland to take a voluntary workplace action during their lunch breaks on the 16th of October. Joined by several other sector-specific solidarity groups, including Teachers for Palestine and Postal Workers for Palestine, this Stand Out for Gaza day of action saw approximately 40 workplaces and 1,000 workers standing in solidarity for Palestine on that Thursday. This marks a modest but vital step forward. Such actions are the template. An hour out of work, a coordinated withdrawal of labour, a stoppage at critical points: these acts teach workers they can mobilise independently, and they teach union leaders that rank-and-file solidarity cannot be ignored. We must combine rank-and-file pressure with political education so unions move from symbolic motions to material action. As these actions gain momentum, we can push for large-scale workplace solidarity that prioritises sectors with maximum leverage (e.g., health care or education) or are involved in supply chains linked to the occupation.
Even this small step required significant planning. After decades of social partnership and the threat of the Industrial Relations Act, trade unions actively discourage workers from taking action. For several weeks in advance of the 16th, organisers asked for support from national and community Palestine solidarity organisations, trade union councils, and student groups. Notable supporters included the IPSC, Dublin Council of Trade Unions (DCTU), and Derry Council of Trade Unions. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and other major unions (Unite, SIPTU, Forsa) declined to support this time. Healthcare Workers for Palestine held several evening information sessions on Zoom to assuage potential participants’ concerns. This hard work got results.
One day after the first Stand Out for Gaza action, ICTU called for a lunchtime stand-out action on the 28th of November to coincide with an international day of solidarity with Palestine. The healthcare workers continue to take the lead and have called for the next Stand Out for Gaza to take place on the 13th of November. Critics have tried to argue that an action on the 13th of November will detract from an action on the 28th. We believe that the opposite is true: a higher frequency of workplace actions will empower more and more workers to participate, and maintaining momentum independent of the trade unions will ensure that the movement can continue when ICTU declares that it has done its part.
When workers lead, their unions and their governments follow. The rapid, if minor, capitulation of the Italian and Spanish states in response to general strikes there, and the immediate attempt to co-opt the Stand Out for Gaza movement by ICTU shows this definitively. We should be prepared for difficulties ahead. Western governments are cracking down on Palestine solidarity precisely because they feel its power. Labour action represents the most significant threat to the global order that funds and arms Zionism.
The workers of the world – from the imperial cores of Europe and the United State to those kept down by complicit Arab regimes – have had enough of genocide. It is time to use our collective power to achieve liberation for Palestine, from the river to the sea.
