‘Majority do not welcome him’: Trump heads to Ireland amid fury over Gaza

Donald Trump is set to arrive in Ireland on Saturday, but most Irish people aren’t happy about it.

A recent poll by the Sunday Independent and Ireland Thinks reported that 69 percent do not support the US president’s visit.

“Thousands of us will march on Saturday because we refuse to normalise a man who has facilitated genocide,” Sean Radcliffe, an economics undergraduate student at Trinity College Dublin, told Al Jazeera.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin “should say it clearly, firmly, and publicly: the United States is facilitating genocide,” added Radcliffe, who is a leader of the student body’s Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign.

Sean Corcoran, an environmental artist based on the Copper Coast in Waterford, spent five hours with three others carving “No Kings” – a nod to anti-Trump protests under the same name in the US, along with “Gaza, Iran, Ice ,” into the sand of Dublin Bay Beach.

“As an Irish artist and citizen, I believe it is important for me to use my voice to share my opinion about the Trump administration,” he told Al Jazeera. “Despite the diplomatic and security welcome that Mr Trump will receive when he lands in Ireland, the majority of Irish do not welcome him to Ireland.”

Trump is expected to meet with several figures in Ireland’s leadership, including Martin and antiwar President Catherine Connolly, who has previously said the US is, along with France and England, a nation Ireland “certainly cannot trust”.

Protests are planned throughout Ireland, including in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance. Many are themed against Trump’s role in supporting Israel’s actions in Palestine.