The smart money in the Middle East is always on pessimism. Events can be relied on to get worse. But perennial gloom has a flaw. Its unstated assumption is that the war between Israelis and Palestinians is the only conflict in the history of the world that cannot be solved or even ended.
It is 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.
Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland 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 Brian Cowen, and Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams urging the warring parties of the Middle East to learn their lesson and begin ”dialogue”. It’s a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same. 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.
Whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. 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. 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 peace to Northern Ireland that could be emulated in the Middle East. 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 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 such as Hamas cannot be crushed by force, as it serves only to recruit a new generation of fighters.
The next stage is the hardest. Adams has called on Israel to enter into 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.
Yet such a statement would be fraught with risk. Because what has been the key advice of those republicans who have met Hamas leaders? Keep the movement together. It helps no one if the Hamas top brass follow Sinn Fein’s lead and sign up for peaceful means, only for a ”real Hamas” to pop up the next day to take their place. Adams and Martin McGuinness resisted any move that would cause a republican split. The result is that when they were finally ready to do a deal, the deal held.
Once negotiations have begun, Northern Ireland offers paradoxical advice: each side must strengthen its adversary. London and Dublin were careful to ensure that any move on either the nationalist or unionist side did not go unrewarded. If it had, those making the compromises would have lost face in the eyes of their own people.
Israel has not been as wise. Hamas is strong now in part because its Fatah rivals were made to look like dupes before their fellow Palestinians. They gave up the ”armed struggle”, they recognised Israel — and what did they get for it? More checkpoints and settlers on the West Bank than before.
In this context, one of the greatest missed opportunities was the 2005 Israeli pullout from Gaza. Instead of symbolically handing over the territory to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, thereby giving the moderates a prize, Israel withdrew unilaterally — allowing Hamas to claim it as a victory for violence. It is too late to undo that now. Instead Israel will have to emulate the long, patient work that finally brought peace.
That need not take decades. There are elements within Hamas ready to negotiate an end to occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. But Israel has to decide that a meaningful peace is its goal too, starting with an understanding that this problem will never be solved by force. —