Jonathan Freedland: Amid the horror and doom of Gaza, the IRA precedent offers hope
[Jonathan Freedland has been a columnist for the Guardian since 1997.]
The smart money in the Middle East is always on pessimism. Events can be relied on to get worse and worse. But perennial gloom has a flaw. Its unstated assumption is that the war between Israelis and Palestinians is somehow unique - that it is the only conflict in the history of the world that cannot be solved or even ended.
Yet even as the horror continues in Gaza, it's worth recalling that people were once just as fatalistic about battles now long settled. Whether it was apartheid in South Africa or the 30-year bloodshed in Northern Ireland, there were plenty of dark days when the blood seemed as if it would never stop.
Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland, once a byword for strife, is now an invocation of hope. If republicans and unionists - who once wished each other dead - can sit in government together, then surely Israelis and Palestinians are not fated to fight for ever.
That message is in the air just now, with both the Irish prime minister and Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams urging the warring parties of the Middle East to learn their lesson and begin "dialogue". Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been citing his own Northern Ireland experience as a useful precedent. Is he right? And if he is, what exactly are the lessons?
It's a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same: none ever are. The wildest elements of the IRA were never committed, even rhetorically, to the destruction of Great Britain. Yet Hamas's charter does call for the eradication of the state of Israel. (Those close to the organisation insist the document has in effect lapsed.)
Moreover, whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. There was state collusion in killings, but the British army did not bomb entire buildings in the Falls Road because it suspected an IRA cell lurked within.
Nevertheless, there are important similarities. The two sides were fighting over the future of a small piece of territory. The unionist majority often complained that it stood alone, uncomprehended by the rest of the world. Demographics mattered, the notion that one group might soon outnumber the other. And religion was never far below the surface.
What though of the solution? There are at least a few steps that brought eventual peace to Northern Ireland that could be emulated in the Middle East - but they would require an enormous leap of imagination on all sides.
Perhaps the very first move would be a true declaration of intent from Israel. This would be an analogue of the statement in 1990 by the then Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, that the British government had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in retaining the province. If Israel were to make an equally unambiguous declaration that it planned to end its occupation of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements necessary to make room for a viable Palestinian state, that could have a similarly profound effect.
Those who say no Israeli would ever be so bold should read the extraordinary interview Ehud Olmert gave to Yediot Achronot the day he tendered his resignation last September. "We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories," Olmert said. Signalling that he understood the wisdom of the Brooke manoeuvre, he suggested that Menachem Begin's "genius" in forging a peace with Egypt was that he "started from the end. He began by saying, 'I am ready to pull out of the entire Sinai - now let us negotiate'."
It's galling to read those words now, to realise that the Olmert who understood how to make peace then is the same Olmert waging war today. But it shows what is possible.
The second move has to take place inside the heads of both sides: it is the realisation that no military solution will ever be possible. The road to peace in Northern Ireland began when the British army concluded it could never fight the IRA to more than an "honourable draw" and when the IRA realised it would never bomb British troops out of the province. Hamas has similarly to conclude that suicide bombs on Israeli buses and rockets aimed at Israel's southern towns will delay, not bring, an end to occupation. Israel has to understand that a movement like Hamas, rooted in the soil of Gaza, cannot be crushed by force. That, on the contrary, raining fire on Gaza will have the same effect on Hamas that internment had on the IRA: it will recruit a new generation of fighters, making it stronger not weaker.
The next stage is the hardest. Adams has called on Israel to enter direct dialogue with Hamas, learning the Irish lesson that for peace to work it must include even those on the extremes. But it's not quite that simple. Republicans did not get their seat at the table until they had forsworn violence and agreed to pursue their goals by exclusively peaceful means. Israel could truthfully cite the Ulster precedent when it says it cannot sit down with Hamas until it renounces violence...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The smart money in the Middle East is always on pessimism. Events can be relied on to get worse and worse. But perennial gloom has a flaw. Its unstated assumption is that the war between Israelis and Palestinians is somehow unique - that it is the only conflict in the history of the world that cannot be solved or even ended.
Yet even as the horror continues in Gaza, it's worth recalling that people were once just as fatalistic about battles now long settled. Whether it was apartheid in South Africa or the 30-year bloodshed in Northern Ireland, there were plenty of dark days when the blood seemed as if it would never stop.
Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland, once a byword for strife, is now an invocation of hope. If republicans and unionists - who once wished each other dead - can sit in government together, then surely Israelis and Palestinians are not fated to fight for ever.
That message is in the air just now, with both the Irish prime minister and Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams urging the warring parties of the Middle East to learn their lesson and begin "dialogue". Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been citing his own Northern Ireland experience as a useful precedent. Is he right? And if he is, what exactly are the lessons?
It's a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same: none ever are. The wildest elements of the IRA were never committed, even rhetorically, to the destruction of Great Britain. Yet Hamas's charter does call for the eradication of the state of Israel. (Those close to the organisation insist the document has in effect lapsed.)
Moreover, whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. There was state collusion in killings, but the British army did not bomb entire buildings in the Falls Road because it suspected an IRA cell lurked within.
Nevertheless, there are important similarities. The two sides were fighting over the future of a small piece of territory. The unionist majority often complained that it stood alone, uncomprehended by the rest of the world. Demographics mattered, the notion that one group might soon outnumber the other. And religion was never far below the surface.
What though of the solution? There are at least a few steps that brought eventual peace to Northern Ireland that could be emulated in the Middle East - but they would require an enormous leap of imagination on all sides.
Perhaps the very first move would be a true declaration of intent from Israel. This would be an analogue of the statement in 1990 by the then Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, that the British government had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in retaining the province. If Israel were to make an equally unambiguous declaration that it planned to end its occupation of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements necessary to make room for a viable Palestinian state, that could have a similarly profound effect.
Those who say no Israeli would ever be so bold should read the extraordinary interview Ehud Olmert gave to Yediot Achronot the day he tendered his resignation last September. "We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories," Olmert said. Signalling that he understood the wisdom of the Brooke manoeuvre, he suggested that Menachem Begin's "genius" in forging a peace with Egypt was that he "started from the end. He began by saying, 'I am ready to pull out of the entire Sinai - now let us negotiate'."
It's galling to read those words now, to realise that the Olmert who understood how to make peace then is the same Olmert waging war today. But it shows what is possible.
The second move has to take place inside the heads of both sides: it is the realisation that no military solution will ever be possible. The road to peace in Northern Ireland began when the British army concluded it could never fight the IRA to more than an "honourable draw" and when the IRA realised it would never bomb British troops out of the province. Hamas has similarly to conclude that suicide bombs on Israeli buses and rockets aimed at Israel's southern towns will delay, not bring, an end to occupation. Israel has to understand that a movement like Hamas, rooted in the soil of Gaza, cannot be crushed by force. That, on the contrary, raining fire on Gaza will have the same effect on Hamas that internment had on the IRA: it will recruit a new generation of fighters, making it stronger not weaker.
The next stage is the hardest. Adams has called on Israel to enter direct dialogue with Hamas, learning the Irish lesson that for peace to work it must include even those on the extremes. But it's not quite that simple. Republicans did not get their seat at the table until they had forsworn violence and agreed to pursue their goals by exclusively peaceful means. Israel could truthfully cite the Ulster precedent when it says it cannot sit down with Hamas until it renounces violence...