“It doesn't address the full scale of what's happened to the Palestinians,” says Phil Kearney. But “we're acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza who are starving”.
It is warm and the sun is shining on this Friday at midday.
It is 22 August, and Kildare Street is busy with American football fans, packed buses, and office workers out for a lunch break in the sunshine.
Under the shade of the towering London plane trees outside Leinster House sit a group of people who are part of a five-day full time fast, Hungry for Peace in Gaza.
The Dublin group shows solidarity with the Palestinian people by fasting, forgoing food, and only drinking tea and water, from Monday to Friday. This is their fourth fast this year.
Eight of the ten people fasting do so for the full five days. Some fast for a reduced amount of time. Some continue to go to work while fasting.
The fasters sit outside Leinster House from 10am to 5pm, holding signs that read “I am Hungry for Peace in Gaza” in a bid to spread awareness of the forced hunger experienced by hundreds of thousands in Gaza.
On Day 5 of Hungry for Peace in Gaza’s fast, UN relief chief Tom Fletcher declared that there is a famine in Gaza.
“Famine” is “extreme deprivation of food. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident,” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – which includes 21 organisations and intergovernmental institutions.
After 22 months of relentless attacks – including acts of genocide – over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing “catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution, and death”, according to the IPC.
Between mid-August and the end of September, conditions are expected to worsen. Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly, with over 41,000 children under five years of age at a heightened risk of death, it says.
No food entered the Gaza Strip between 2 March and 19 May. Between May and July, some food was allowed to enter, but barely enough to feed the population.
Humanitarian organisations have been impeded or denied entry by Israeli authorities, leaving food stuck just outside Gaza while people inside starve.
The IPC has determined that the famine in Gaza is “entirely man-made”.
“It is a moral and humanitarian imperative to summon the political will to provide humanitarian aid in accordance with humanitarian principles, end the conflict, ensure protection, and restore basic living standards,” its report says.
Hungry for Peace in Gaza was borne out of Phil Kearney’s roots in climate activism.
He once participated in a “five-day fast” with another person, and their slogan was “Hungry for Climate Action”.
He set up the first Hungry for Peace in Gaza fast in March, “when the blockade of aid into Gaza started”, he says.
His concern for the Palestinian people was deep-rooted, but the blockade was “completely intolerable”, and he “had to do something”, he says.
When Kearney first established the Hungry for Peace in Gaza, it was just him fasting at the gates of Leinster House.
Then, slowly but surely, more people started to join. The group is now 10 strong.
Orla O’Leary, a special-needs art teacher and activist, decided to join the fast after seeing the group outside Leinster House.
Feeling “very frustrated” and saddened by images coming out of Gaza, O’Leary wanted to do something to show solidarity with the Palestinian people, and to send a “powerful message” to decision-makers, she says.
As a long-time activist in Dublin for Palestine, O’Leary also fundraises for Palestinian organisations by organising local swap shops.
But Hungry for Peace in Gaza does not fundraise, she says. O’Leary describes the fast more as “an act of solidarity”, saying that it’s “about the principle”, “not about the money”.
Kearney says some think the group is “too soft” in its tactics. But he shakes that off: “So be it.”
“This is a different kind of protest,” he says. “It doesn't address the full scale of what's happened to the Palestinians. We're acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza who are starving.”
Fasting was chosen as a mode of protest in an effort to “identif[y] with the people in Gaza who are more and more suffering from malnutrition, and now famine”, Kearney says.
It sends “a different kind of message”, and “goes a bit further than marching or chanting or flag waving”, he says.
O’Leary and Kearney note their “privilege” in choosing to fast for a set amount of time, and ending their hunger at the end of the fifth day.
Still, “fasting means giving up something”, Kearney says. Sacrificing food for a prolonged time is “quite challenging”, as “it really interrupts the regular pattern of consumption”.
Fasting has visceral effects on the body, says O’Leary, who describes feeling “the cold set in to” her, “brain fog,” and the “pains” of hunger.
In stark contrast to those who are forcibly hungry, not knowing when they will get food, in Gaza, the fasters acknowledge that they know they are “eating tonight” and can “look forward to” it.
But “What if you didn't know when the next meal was coming?” asks Kearney.
His voice shaking, he talks about the reality for so many people in Palestine now: of sending “your kid out to go and collect some of these things that have been dropped from the planes and he or she gets shot [and] doesn't come back”.
Since May 2025, “at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food”, according to the UN.
As the genocide in Gaza intensifies, “standing up in solidarity” is imperative, O’Leary says.
People need to be “less selfish with our time and be more aware of our privileges” when it comes to activism, she says.
Activism can be an inconvenience in people’s busy lives, “but that’s what it is”, O’Leary says. “If you're helping someone, you're giving someone your time … that's just the nature of helping.”
O’Leary says she hopes the five-day fast will inspire others to take any action they can in their daily lives to speak up for Palestine.
Whether it be boycotting, or emailing TDs, O’Leary wants to remind people that the genocide is still happening, she says.
“We just have to keep talking about Palestine, or else it disappears, and we can't let that happen,” she says.
Hungry for Peace in Gaza has spread, with some of O’Leary’s friends in South America also fasting “to show up and show solidarity”.
If others follow in these footsteps, Hungry for Peace in Gaza could become “a global movement”, she says.
Kearney, says he’s not too focused on outcomes – but that “more and more people” have said they want to get involved.
As O’Leary and Kearney talk, the sound of a protest grows louder and louder from down the road.
Then, a sea of Palestinian flags, banners, and colours appears – and a group of people is walking down Molesworth Street.
It is a weekly march for Palestine, one of numerous regular actions across Ireland. The sign at the front of the march reads: “STOP STARVING GAZA.”
Harikrishnan Sasikumar’s exhibition of photos of these objects, At Home in Ireland, is on display now at The Hive at DCU’s U building.
For those in a central yellow zone, annual permit fees could go up from €50 a year to €225, a council briefing suggests.
Rather than repeatedly announcing new plans and initiatives to clean up the streets in the inner-city, “it’d be nice if the current plans worked”, a local says.
The move is part of a long-running effort to stop the council from buying products with connections to Israel.
