The potential for peace, negotiation, and compromise in deeply fractured regions — the conflict in Northern Ireland and the Middle East share patterns
IT MIGHT seem crass to compare the former ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland with burgeoning warfare in the Middle East. The scales are far different. The death toll in Northern Ireland over a whole year, towards the end of that violent period was under a hundred and over the whole period about 3,500. This was enough to inflict enormous trauma on a small society, and the number of wounded was much higher, but it would be insensitive and indulgent to say that from our experience here we have a particular empathy with any side in that carnage.
But setting aside any such presumption we can look at the basic ingredients, the participants, and map one conflict on to the other.
The Palestinian cause is motivated by similar feelings to those which motivated republicanism and nationalism. It is even divided into two elements, one more violent, Hamas and the Provisional IRA and one seeking a constitutional settlement, Fatah and the SDLP.
The legally recognised but contested state in which they operated was part of Britain on the island of Ireland. Republicans saw that territory as purloined and colonised.
In Northern Ireland there were pro-British loyalist groups like the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. Drawing our map fairly roughly, these would be like the West Bank settlers pitting themselves against the Palestinians.
In Belfast, these groups drove Catholics from their homes and reinforced the division of the city into distinct Catholic and Protestant areas.
In some loyalist/Protestant areas the Israeli flag is flown from lamp posts today. To a greater extent Palestinian flags are flown in Catholic areas.
And that language tells you that, as in Israel/Palestine factions, even as they secularise, identify by religion.
Beyond the territory of Israel and Palestine, outside forces compound the difficulty of making peace.
Iran provides weaponry and support for Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Similarly Libya provided arms and finance to the IRA to enable them to maintain their campaign. Money and weapons also reached the IRA through Irish American friends.
Ironically this support came at a time when the IRA was seeking to wind down and seek a political compromise.
Our Lebanon was the Irish Republic from which IRA units could operate across the border and to which they could retreat out of reach of British security forces. There was a government there at times which seemed unwilling or unable to do much about that.
Given that if you were to represent conflict as a board game you could, essentially, use the same board for both, you would think that lessons could be learnt from one that would be applicable to the other.
Both Britain and Israel have been adept at infiltrating their enemies. This has been a key part of their strategies.
Both loyalists and republican militant groups were riddled with spies towards the end. That has left a legacy of unresolved investigations into past crimes because the state has been keen to protect its informers. It accepted that, to retain their credibility within the IRA and loyalist groups, they had to be free to participate in attacks. Murders were allowed to proceed so that attention would not be drawn to these agents.
The extent of that has been exposed recently in the Kenova Report into Britain’s top agent in the IRA, Freddie Scappaticci and in Trevor Birnie’s new nook, Shooting Crows (Merrion) which traces the actions of murderous agents inside loyalist groups.
The trouble in Northern Ireland was not just different in scale from that in the Middle East but also in the state’s methods.
The British never used fighter planes or helicopter gunships to attack the IRA.
In 1972 the head of the army here recommended that mortar bombs be used in Belfast housing estates. He anticipated a massive land battle. The politicians had more sense and a longer game.
There were atrocities by the British army and those running agents also directed them towards targets, but the degree of divergence from the ordinary rule of law was less here than in Israel/Palestine.
And that longer game was to preserve the leadership of the militant groups in anticipation of a time when they could be negotiated with.
At every opportunity, Israel decapitates its enemy.
But Britain protected the republican leader Gerry Adams, actively intercepting an attempt to kill him, and apparently ‘jarking’ guns to be used in an assassination attempt against him.
And it was a strategy that paid off.
Time and destiny took care of Colonel Gaddafi and removed his malign interference. Irish America broadly bought into the peace deal compromise which was, in essence, a two state solution though with the mechanisms established by which they could be merged.
The more militant Provisional IRA moderated its position, essentially becoming so much like the SDLP, the constitutional nationalists, that it colonised their support base and became the majority party within that community.
They had sworn for decades that they would never settle on the terms they finally accepted.
But the harshness of attitude that prevails under the pressure of war eases in peace time and that could happened in Israel/Palestine too, though with the extent of the damage done to relations it would probably take a long time.
Malachi O’Doherty’s latest book
How To Fix Northern Ireland is
published by Atlantic Books
