Geopolitics on the streets: the symbolic connections between Northern Ireland, Palestine, and Israel in murals and flags

Abstract

This thesis examines how murals and flags in Northern Ireland express symbolic solidarity with the Israel–Palestine conflict, revealing how visual culture is used to construct and perform geopolitical identity in a post-conflict setting. Drawing on critical and popular geopolitics, as well as theories of space, memory, and representation, the study investigates how Catholic/Republican and Protestant/Unionist communities visually align themselves with Palestine and Israel, respectively. Using visual discourse analysis, it analyses a dataset of murals and flags photographed in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry in 2024, supplemented by archival material. The findings show that Republican communities primarily express solidarity through murals that link Irish anti-colonial narratives to the Palestinian struggle, using visual tropes such as martyrdom, resistance, and shared historical grievance. In contrast, Unionist communities more often use flags to signal allegiance with Israel, reflecting themes of religious identification, statehood, and ideological continuity. These differences reflect deeper cultural and strategic choices in visual communication, shaped by the historical development of each community's representational practices. The thesis concludes that murals and flags are not merely reflective of identity, but are active tools in the ongoing spatial production of post-conflict political meaning, embedding local narratives within global frameworks of solidarity and opposition.