by Eamonn McDonagh
Regular readers of this blog will know that we have repeatedly argued against the usefulness of the Northern Ireland analogy applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nevertheless, like the corpse of a drowned dog, it keeps bobbing to the surface again and again. The latest example is by Ali Abunimah in the New York Times. With a deep sigh and a heavy step I’ll now proceed to take it apart.
"The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists."
This is false. Only the most extreme factions of unionism, those associated with illegal terrorist groups, rejected any compromise with Catholic nationalists. The rest only balked at whatever they perceived as a first step towards the end of the Union. And far from supporting Unionist intransigence successive British governments sought to encourage their Northern Irish citizens to reach an acceptable internal compromise.
"The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom."
Saying that the IRA had close ties to Sinn Féin is like saying that the United States Army has close ties to the United Sates government, with the important difference that in the Sinn Féin - IRA relationship it was always the latter that made the key decisions. Furthermore, the British government negotiated with Sinn Féin - IRA on a cyclical basis (fight a bit, talk a bit, fight a bit) at least as far back as the Cheyne Walk talks of 1972. And finally, the great bulk of the violence carried out by the IRA occurred in Northern Ireland and was inflicted on ordinary people.
"A parallel can be seen with the American refusal to speak to the Palestinian party Hamas, which decisively won elections in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006."
Given the fact that, as I said above, Britain was negotiating either secretly or in public from 1972 all the way up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, no such parallel can be drawn.
"The United States insists that Hamas meet strict preconditions before it can take part in negotiations: recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by agreements previously signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, of which Hamas is not a member."
These conditions are strict? Recognize the existence of a state that’s existed since 1948, just recognize it, not love it and applaud it? As regards violence, when the Good Friday Agreement was signed the IRA had been maintaining a ceasefire for three and half years. And if Hamas has chosen to make an enemy of the historic vehicle of Palestinian nationalism, whose problem is that?
"These demands are unworkable. Why should Hamas or any Palestinian accept Israel’s political demands, like recognition, when Israel refuses to recognize basic Palestinian demands like the right of return for refugees?"
Because if Israel accepts the “right” of return it will cease to exist thus making the question of whether Hamas wants to recognize it or not completely irrelevant.
"As for violence, Hamas has inflicted a fraction of the harm on Israeli civilians that Israel inflicts on Palestinian civilians. If violence disqualifies Hamas, surely much greater violence should disqualify the Israelis?"
Over the centuries British rule in Ireland inflicted vastly greater suffering on the Irish than they were ever able to inflict back on the British. During the recently ended conflict the British state and its agents killed in numbers that comfortably bear comparison with those killed by the various nationalist terrorist groups. It’s not having inflicted violence on its enemies in the past that disqualifies this or that group from negotiations, it’s whether or not it wishes to go on inflicting it if it doesn’t get exactly what it wants.
"It was only by breaking with one-sided demands that Mr. Mitchell was able to help bring peace to Northern Ireland. In 1994, for instance, Mr. Mitchell, then a Democratic senator from Maine, urged President Bill Clinton - against strenuous British objections - to grant a United States visa to Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader."
The concession of the visa to Adams, for a trip which involved nothing more than glad handing Irish American supporters of the Provisional Republican movement, may well have improved the mood of certain sectors of Sinn Féin - IRA with regard to calling a ceasefire. If the concession of a US visa to Ismail Haniye for a trip that would allow him some tea drinking and back slapping with Arab American supporters were likely to lead to a complete Hamas ceasefire leading to something like a Good Friday deal between Israel and Hamas, I’d be all for it.
Let’s just remind ourselves what Sinn Féin - IRA settled for in the Good Friday Agreement. They recognized Northern as an integral part of the UK, decommissioned their weapons and dissolved the military structure of the IRA. In return they got the early release of their prisoners (on license, any return to violence by the main Provisional Republican movement and they’ll be straight back in the can), some policing reforms, a couple of cross border talking shops and an autonomous local assembly.
I’ll try to translate that into the situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas accepts that the West Bank and Gaza (why not?) form part of Greater Israel, a Jewish state. Hamas abandons the armed struggle and hands over its weapons to UN monitors. Israel sets up an autonomous Palestine parliament to rule the territories. As well as representative to that assembly Palestinians also get to elect some members to take care of their interests in the Knesset. In return, Israel releases Hamas’s prisoners on parole, guarantees that a larger percentage of Magav recruits will be Arabs and promises to make greater efforts to promote the Arabic language and Arab culture in Israel.
"Both the Irish and Middle Eastern conflicts figure prominently in American domestic politics - yet both have played out in very different ways. The United States allowed the Irish-American lobby to help steer policy toward the weaker side: the Irish government in Dublin and Sinn in and other nationalist parties in the north. At times, the United States put intense pressure on the British government, leveling the field so that negotiations could result in an agreement with broad support. By contrast, the American government let the Israel lobby shift the balance of United States support toward the stronger of the two parties: Israel."
Perhaps more than anywhere else the author here reveals his ignorance of the Irish history. The Irish government, from the early 70s on, was not allied with Sinn Féin - IRA but rather with the British government against it. Not least among the factors leading to the defeat of the Provisional Republican movement in Ireland was the ever closer cooperation between the security forces on either side of the border dividing Northern Ireland from Ireland. Special, juryless courts that convicted on the word of a senior police officer and restrictions on the freedom of speech of Sinn Féin members were just two of the more significant of the battery of measures deployed against Sinn Féin - IRA by successive Irish governments. This fact renders null the rest of the analysis in the paragraph I quote above.
Abunimah moves to a conclusion with the following:
"This disparity has not gone unnoticed by those with firsthand knowledge of the Irish talks. In a 2009 letter to The Times of London, several British and Irish negotiators, including John Hume, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Belfast Agreement, criticized the one-sided demands imposed solely on Hamas. 'Engaging Hamas,' the negotiators wrote, 'does not amount to condoning terrorism or attacks on civilians. In fact, it is a precondition for security and for brokering a workable agreement'.”
Though they may have had the best of intentions in signing this letter, the experience of John Hume and the other signatories in bringing peace to Northern Ireland gives them no special insight into bringing to anywhere else. They even run the risk of think that participating in one successful experience of peacemaking has given access to some sort of philosophers stone of international conflict resolution.
Let me conclude with some rather more valid comparisons between the Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine conflicts than those offered by the lamentable Abunimah. Do keep them in mind the next time you hear someone calling for immediate negotiations with Hamas. These can and must be delayed until Hamas has it clear that the two options available to it are its destruction and disappearance or the graceful acceptance of Jewish sovereignty in Israel in return for some reasonable sweeteners from that state.
1. The Northern Ireland peace process worked because it allowed the Provisional Republican movement a graceful and painless surrender after it had been militarily and politically defeated by the British state.
2. The political conditions that allowed the Good Friday Agreement to be made consisted, among other things, of the wearing down of the will of Sinn Féin and the IRA to resist British rule in Northern Ireland by force. Among the methods employed to do this were interrogation techniques mounting to torture, mass internment without trial and deniable assassinations. It’s good to remember all this when we hear woolly talk about the peace process.
3. Provisional Republican ideology - though betrayed a thousand times with bloody sectarian deeds - was based on the Enlightenment, the unity of Catholic, Protestant and dissenter and the defense of the men of no property. Many of the ideological precursors of Provoism were Protestants and the central ritual of its annual calendar of commemorations was and remains the visit to the grave of Wolfe Tone at Bodenstown. It’s kind of hard to imagine any of the leadership of Hamas visiting the grave of any Jew for any purpose whatsoever.
4. The IRA never called for the uprooting of Protestant “settlements” in Northern Ireland and never called for Catholics to be given back the land the planters took from them. Provo ideology held that the Protestants were suffering from a kind of false consciousness imposed on them by the UK government; once the UK government decided it didn’t want to stay in Northern Ireland any more, they would come to their senses and realize that their best interests lay in cheerfully integrating themselves into a 32 county socialist republic. It’s complete nonsense, but at least it contains no element of winding the clock to some sort of pre-plantation Shangri La and no suggestion that the Protestants belong anywhere other than where they are.
5. The disjunction between the foul sectarian massacres of Provoism and its, in certain respects, laudable ideals is not a small matter. If a group or a nation commits itself to high ideals and then proceeds to do things that go directly against that stance they can be called on it - and if they are called on it often enough then it tends to make a difference. This gap between words and actions undoubtedly played a part in the chipping away of support for nationalist violence in Northern Ireland. The ideology of Hamas, on the other hand, is based on racial hatred and the supremacy of one religion over all others. Check out their charter if you have any doubts on this. You can call them a lot of things but not hypocrites.
6. Hamas isn’t fighting for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, it’s fighting to replace Israel with such a state. So, for the comparison with the Provos to be valid they would have had to have been seeking to conquer the entire UK and make London the capital of Ireland.
7. Hamas isn’t fighting alone; it’s fighting with the explicit and acknowledged aid of a regional power, Iran, whose leaders never tire of repeating that they want to see Israel destroyed. The Provos never enjoyed the unbridled support of an oil-rich foreign power. Noraid collections in bars in New York and Boston don’t bear a second’s comparison with the role of Iran, a state openly bent on the destruction of Israel - not on helping Palestinians or Palestine into existence as a state like any other - and the rapid acquisition of the means to do so.
Eamonn McDonagh
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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