AN TAOISEACH LEO Varadkar has said that the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza will form part of his speech at this evening’s shamrock ceremony with US president Joe Biden at the White House.
The evening event in the East Room of the White House will mark the end of a week of engagements which involved an earlier bilateral between the two leaders.
As TheJournal political editor Christina Finn has written, the ceremony is usually a cheerful affair, but an undercurrent of tension is expected to be present as the Taoiseach attempts to thread a needle between making positive remarks about the relationship between Ireland and America and making sobering comments about the reality of the loss of life in Gaza right now.
Israel has carried out a relentless bombardment and ground offensive which has killed at least 31,645 people in Gaza, most of them women and children.
The Taoiseach faced calls to boycott the St Patrick’s Day trip to the White House this year, given the military support the US is providing Israel.
Instead, the focus all week has been on Varadkar’s messaging and whether he has gone far enough to hammer home the message from the Irish people about where they stand on what is happening in Palestine.
Speaking to reporters in Washington today, Varadkar said he had raised the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on a number of occasions during his trip and would do so again.
“It forms a part of my speech, so you’ll have a chance to hear that in the next couple of hours,” he said.
“Obviously, when it comes to Gaza, there are different perspectives, between Ireland and the US, there are different perspectives within the US as well,” he said.
But I have to say… nobody I’ve encountered has said to me that we should tone down our position or that they feel that we’ve gone too far in the comments that we’ve made, the position we’ve taken, that is reassuring.
He also said it was “very clear” that Biden had been working to secure a ceasefire.
Varadkar also said that he “didn’t buy” claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethenyahu that Israel was allowing sufficient aid into Gaza.
“I don’t buy it. It’s very clear to me from the people who are on the ground, not just the UN agencies, but also the Red Cross, and other international agencies that are on the ground, that they’re saying to us,” he said.
The ceremony is set to take place later this evening,
With reporting from Christina Finn in Washington DC
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