My weather app tells me it’s seven degrees outside. There’s a chill in the air that makes it feel colder. Phil Kearney is on day five of his fast for peace in Gaza. The Palestinian people have one day of flour left before supplies run out.
Kearney is standing outside Leinster House holding a sign that reads “I’m hungry for peace in Gaza”. I’ve walked by him a few times over the past four days. Kearney’s friends, Patrick and Kathie Davey, are out with him today for support. Kathie has been with him for most of the five days on a reduced fast. Kearney is in his seventies. He hasn’t had anything to eat in five days. He drinks only water and black tea. He sits outside Leinster House from 10 am until 5 pm every day.
The recent escalation of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is what prompted the fast. “I had been planning and threatening to do it for the last year, but I kept chickening out. I found reasons all the time, like I couldn’t find anyone to do it with me, or now the ceasefire is coming … Anyway, last week made all the difference. The fact that they were bombarding while refusing to let any humanitarian aid in….” He pauses. “It’s just completely beyond the beyond”.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen this”, he gestures to another poster propped against the wall beside him, “they’re down to one day of flour in Gaza, and they’re still not letting in any food”. No aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since March 2nd. Food, safe water, medical care and supplies; with these essentials being blocked, the number of preventable deaths of children in Gaza is expected to increase.
This is the longest period of aid blockage since the beginning of the war. Unicef reports that over 15,000 children in Gaza have lost their lives from Israeli attacks since that time. Over 39,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza, according to the Palestinian statistics agency. There are currently one million children living in Gaza, and who are subject to Israel’s escalation of violence and blockade of essentials. Kearney’s final day of fasting has just happened to coincide with the final day of flour left in Gaza.
Kearney is not new to fasting for a political or social cause. He fasted for climate action nine years ago in a similar format and also fasted for a week in the eighties when Ronald Reagan visited Dublin. “There were four of us fasting on Dame Street because there was a march passing by there, and we stayed for the full week, night and day. I was younger, I could cope with it then. I wasn’t sure at this stage, I’m in my seventies, that I could cope with five days but actually it’s not a problem”.
“I don’t think people should be afraid of it,” says Kearney. “It’s relatively easy, good to know that you can give up things, and that’s part of the thinking, is that we need to show that we can make a little sacrifice, or give up things, or do without. It’s a bit of a mini identification with what people are going through in Gaza”.
“I think fasting is quite a long established practice”. Kearney uses Gandhi as an example who: “used fasting as a political tool or lever, and I think we’ve got to go beyond marching and waving flags. There are wonderful marches, and I support them, I take part in them, but they’re not making any difference. So this is just trying to ratchet it up a little and I would like to see more people fasting. That was part of my hope, that it might result in others doing similar actions. And if that happened at any sort of scale, it might have a bigger impact on the politicians and the decision makers.”
Kearney has been approached “loads” over the past five days by “people from all over the world and quite a few politicians, mainly Sinn Féin, to be fair to them, they’ve been very attentive.…Nobody from Fine Fáil or Fine Gael, at all. Now maybe they just didn’t see it, but some of them just walked by, and journalists walked by and showed no interest. They’re completely focused on [what’s going on] in here”, he gestures to Leinster House behind him. “But the level of response has been very heartwarming. People are very empathetic and grateful that it’s happening, and very concerned of course as well”.
“I’ve lost five kilos, which is not a problem,” he says. “It’s normal, when you start to fast, you lose a lot of fluids very quickly”.
He found it difficult in the beginning.
“The first couple of days are the toughest and then you get into a kind of a rhythm, or an altered state, and it just drifts, you drift along, and you become more thoughtful, I think, and more focused,” Kearney tells me.
No one who approached Kearney has shown interest in joining the fast.
“That’s a bit of a disappointment, I’d hoped that somebody actually might take over when I’m finished. But I just decided at the last minute, so I could imagine, with better planning, that you could organise a rota of some kind. And hopefully some people will come back to me afterwards and ask about it and I might persuade them to do it.”
Kearney phrased his cause as “Hungry for Peace in Gaza” to try not to just take one side. “It’s not that I’m in any way positive about what Israel is doing, but they need peace as much as the Gazans do in the longer term. I’m trying to look at the bigger picture. It’s a disaster for Israel as well, but they’re the oppressors, and they’re the bombers, and what they’re doing is atrocious”.
