St. Patrick’s Day at the White House is ordinarily a moment for celebration, with the fountains dyed green and a crystal bowl of shamrocks exchanged as a symbol of friendly ties between the United States and Ireland.
There will still be shamrocks this year, but Israel’s war in Gaza is lending a darker backdrop to the occasion. President Joe Biden is welcoming a delegation of Irish leaders under pressure from their constituents — Ireland is a place where support for the Palestinian cause runs deep, informed by what many regard as shared history — to make a strong case for bringing about a permanent ceasefire.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Taoiseach or prime minister, has vowed to represent widely held Irish sympathies for Palestinians when he meets with Biden in the Oval Office. While he rebuffed calls by some Irish politicians to boycott the annual White House stop, he has made plain the Gaza war lends fresh urgency to this year’s talks.
“I’ll use that opportunity to put across Ireland’s perspective on this and tell them how Irish people feel. And that is that we want to see a ceasefire immediately, for the killing to stop, the hostages to be released without condition, food and medicine to get into Gaza and we also want to see a new peace process,” he said earlier this week during a visit to Boston, according to Irish state broadcaster RTE.
The White House similarly said the two men were expected to discuss the situation in the Middle East and humanitarian efforts in Gaza along with a range of other issues.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, neither Irish nor White House officials said they expected it to be hostile or tense, and Varadkar told reporters in Boston, “I’m not here to tell (Biden) off or tick him off.”
Still, the war will make for serious discussion on…
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