String of further pro-Palestine protests planned in Northern Ireland - from Garvaghy Road to BBC HQ in Belfast - amid ongoing absence of pro-Israeli demonstrations

It is one of a number of demonstrations relating to the renewed carnage in the Middle East, sparked by a Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7.

There has so far been a single, relatively sparsely-attended pro-Israel vigil since the attack, with no more planned.

• Tonight’s Garvaghy Road event is set to take place at 6.30pm, but there are scant further details, except for a statement that it is "in support of the Palestinian people".

It has been promoted by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, using the hashtag #gazagenocide.

• Israel-Gaza: DUP MLA says 'from the river to the sea' chant should not be tolerated as UK Home Secretary signals need for a crackdown

• There is also set to be an "emergency vigil" at the international wall on the Falls Road, west Belfast, tonight at 7pm.
• And in Londonderry, there will be an "emergency protest" at 5.30pm at the war memorial at The Diamond, then a walk to Guildhall Square.

"Come out and show our solidarity and anger at the massacres being carried out in Gaza by the Israeli war machine," says a flyer for the event.

No application for a parade has been received by the Parades Commission.

Police are already investigating an earlier unnotified pro-Palestine parade in the city.

• There are is a protest set for Queen's University Belfast on Thursday at 1pm, but again, details are scarce.
• Also on Thursday is a "black flag event" at Belfast City Hall at 7pm.
• Arguably the biggest protest of the coming days is set to be outside the BBC's Belfast headquarters at 3pm on Saturday.

• Belfast political art group which won the Turner Prize vows to boycott Israel along with a string of other performers

The IPSC describes the BBC event as follows: "Israel has blockaded the Gaza strip, cutting off water supplies and access to healthcare, forcing people from their homes, and is bombing civilians with impunity, killing over 2600 people using white phosphorous chemical weapons and F-16 jets supplied by the US, UK and their allies.

"We cannot stand idly by and allow the Palestinians to suffer under the boot of the biggest imperial powers in the world.

“World leaders and the mainstream media have lined up to condemn Palestinians for fighting back against occupation.

"Yet they say nothing about our own western governments who give political cover and military support to Israeli apartheid and brutality.

"Join us to march to the BBC to highlight the complicity of mainstream media in this conflict."

• On Sunday at 1pm a gathering will be held at Market Street in Lurgan, described as a "Palestine solidarity rally".

According to the UN Office for the Co-Ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of Tuesday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza was reporting 3,000 Palestinians killed, and Israeli sources were reporting 1,300 Israeli fatalities – though precise confirmations of numbers are proving impossible to obtain.

The long-term aspiration of most mainstream western politicians, and of many Israelis and Arabs, has been a two-state solution: a sovereign Israeli state roughly within the country's 1967 borders, and a sovereign Palestinian state next to it.

In this vein, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (basically the old government of Palestine) agreed to recognise Israel in 1993.

Almost the whole world – with the exception of a number of Arab states, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Cuba – officially recognises Israel today.

Palestine meanwhile is recognised by 135 of the other 194 states in the world (including by Turkey, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and India) but not by the western powers: the USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, or Australia.

Ireland also does not recognise Palestine.

In 2014, the House of Commons voted by 274 to 12 to recognise Palestine as a state (with five DUP MPs being among the 12 who voted against), but this vote was not binding on the government.

Hamas has effectively ruled the Gaza Strip since it won an election there in 2006 – the last election held in the Palestinian territories.

Israel has tightly controlled entry of goods and people into the Gaza Strip ever since for fear of empowering Hamas, and repeated outbursts of cross-border violence have killed several thousand people (overwhelmingly Palestinians).

The Palestinian territories are poor in comparison to Israel, standing at 106 in the UN's Human Development Index league table compared with Israel at 22.

However Palestine lies only slightly behind its Arab neighbours Egypt (97) and Jordan (102), and is above next door nation Lebanon (112).

As well as bombings in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza enclave, adding (according to Haaretz’ English translation): "No power, no food, no gas, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."

Hamas was formed in the late 1980s, and its charter set out an extreme Islamist interpretation of Jewish-Muslim relations.

It stated a desire not just to re-conquer Israel itself by exclusively armed means (“so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement”) but also casts itself as “the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism... [and] the fight with the warmongering Jews”.