Mixed Irish Blessing

The prospect of next week's direct talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers no obvious grounds for enthusiasm, or even hope. Abbas has agreed to the talks with a reluctance that seems to border on dread, while Netanyahu, his public firmly behind him, feels little pressure to make real concessions. Middle East experts have set expectations at subbasement levels. But George Mitchell, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, believes he knows something the handicappers don't: With enough patience and persistence, you can bring the most bitter enemies to see their common interest. That was the lesson he learned from his role in the Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s. "We had about 700 days of failure and one day of success," as he put it recently. As then, so now: "Past efforts at peace that did not succeed cannot deter us from trying again."

Having conducted successful negotiations under very trying conditions not only in Northern Ireland but between baseball's owners and players, Mitchell has earned a right to his quiet and undemonstrative optimism. Hopefulness is itself an important ingredient for negotiations: You often have to believe in the possibility of a successful outcome more than the adversaries do just to get them talking to one another. In short, we should not want Mitchell to feel any less positive about the Middle East than he apparently does. But that's different from the question of whether his hopefulness is justified. Does the Northern Ireland peace process offer a meaningful precedent for next week's talks? What are the lessons of Mitchell's first foray into global diplomacy, which were crowned with success in 1998?

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PIERCE O REILLY

6:09 PM ET

August 27, 2010

Loyalist, Unionist, Nationalist

The article erroneously refers to the Northern Ireland conflict as being between ' "loyalists'' and 'unionists'. In fact, the term 'loyalist' also describes those who were 'loyal' to the British Crown during the conflict, and is often seen as being synonymous with 'unionist'.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Loyalism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionism_in_Ireland

Those who favoured Northern Ireland unifying with the Republic of Ireland were not termed ‘loyalist’ but rather ‘republican’ or ‘nationalist’. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_republicanism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_nationalism.

Moreover, the author makes a common mistake in assuming that the conflict was between Protestants and Catholic, and was fundamentally religious in nature. (“The Catholics wanted to join largely Catholic Ireland, while the Protestants wanted to remain within the United Kingdom. ”) Though it is true that most members of the loyalist community were Protestant and that most members of the Nationalist community were Catholic, this was by no means universally the case. See, for instance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Unionist and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Nationalist.

By making these mistakes, the author overstates the importance of religion over politics in the conflict.

AVILLA

8:25 PM ET

Not quite...

I agree with Pierce above--the Irish/English issue was never about religion. The problems between those two started way back, centuries ago, before the Anglican Church was even founded. The issue extended through the Tudors' reigns, through Cromwell (who was not very nice to the Irish, to put it mildly), through the 18th and 19th centuries. The Troubles were a continuation of a long, long battle--not a separate one unto itself. It is a classic issue of colonizer vs colonized. The colonizers were Protestants and the colonized were Catholics, but if they were Buddhists and Hindus instead, the problem would still exist.

Northern Ireland is still under British rule (and has a large population of descendants of British settlers AND native Irish people--thus the problem) although it's been given a bit more autonomy as of late. And I think a lot of it had to do with exhaustion. This has been going on for nearly NINE HUNDRED YEARS, since the Normans invaded Ireland. Peace had to come eventually. However, with the Israelis, the conflict is much more recent. True, there were tensions between the two religions prior to Israel's founding, but nothing like how it is now. Will we have to wait another millennium for this mess to be sorted out?

(PS--Interestingly, the last time I was in Belfast, I saw a mural depicting an Irish flag and a Palestinian flag side-by-side. I wish I took a picture of it. There were two peace/victory hands painted over each flag, as a sign of unity I suppose. I later learned that the Unionists routinely sympathized with the Israeli cause and indeed have flown the Israeli flag over their offices. I just found that interesting. The more things change...)

DERMOT

6:22 PM ET

August 31, 2010

Religion in the NI conflict

It's far too simplistic to say that the Irish / English issue was never about religion. The fact that, at the Reformation, the Gaelic Irish clans and the descendants of the Norman invaders of the 12th/13th centuries both refused in the majority to abandon their allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, while the English did exactly that from Henry VIII onwards, laid the foundation for a major element of distinctive identity which made it all the more difficult for later English rulers to assimilate Ireland into a united British state as they were able to do with Protestant Scotland.

The Irish / British conflicts of the 19th/20th centuries, while not primarily centred on theological differences, did retain strong elements of the cultural differences associated with the two religions. During the struggle for Home Rule in the UK Parliament between 1886 and 1914, the Ulster Unionist Party represented the only industrialised part of Ireland while the Nationalist Home Rule Party represented an overwhelmingly agricultural peasantry. The Unionists' case was partly based on resistance to the idea of coming under the control of a backward, largely farmer-dominated Irish parliament that would threaten their freedom of trade with Britain and the wider Empire. But another element in it was fear that the Protestant tradition of independent thought would count for little in an autonomous Ireland where the majority Catholic population gave unquestioning obedience to their priests and bishops, even, at times, in secular matters.

And behind that fear lay the Protestant folk memory of religious persecution, of the Protestant martyrs burned at the stake by Queen Mary, of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in France, the Inquisition in Spain and massacres at the hands of the Catholic Irish in Ulster during the 1641 insurrection. Further, the self-image of Ulster Protestants was that of a sober, thrifty and hard-working population of Bible-readers while its stereotype of Irish Catholics was of a feckless, lazy, heavy-drinking, superstitious peasantry held in thrall by the priests of Rome.

Avilla, it may seem a bit pedantic but could we please PLEASE drop the idea that the Northern Ireland peace process is the resolution of a 900- (or even 800-) year-old conflict? It is pure mythology. That conflict dates back 400 years at most, to the plantation of the Ulster counties with Protestant settlers from Scotland and England following the defeat of the Gaelic clan chieftains at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The tiny grain of truth in the 800-year myth is that, since there is an almost unbroken line of English monarchs stretching from Norman times down to the present, Ireland was nominally under the rule of those monarchs from 1170 onwards. But the early Norman incursions did not establish any lasting political English rule (outside a small area around Dublin), the Norman families intermarried with the Gaels and Ireland continued politically until Tudor times to be what it had been before the Normans' arrival: an island of scores of small warring clan kingdoms. And of all parts of the island, the least affected by Norman incursion was the North, where the Gaelic clans held on to their power until 1603. If the Irish problem has been one of colonialism, colonial rule dates from that time in Ulster and from the 1650s Cromwellian settlement in the rest of the island.

How did this 800/900-year myth gain currency? The answer is thanks to the propaganda skills of Gerry Adams during the peace process years. Sinn Fein/IRA, as Avner Stein correctly says, was forced to the negotiating table by the realisation that after 25 years it was no nearer the goal of its 'war of national liberation', a.k.a. its squalid sectarian war against the unionists of Ulster. Everything it gained (most importantly, power-sharing) from the 1998 Belfast Agreement had been there already for the taking in the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, negotiated between the two governments and the constitutional parties on both sides. Knowing that the IRA's war had alienated the support of large sections of southern nationalists, but knowing also that the 800-year conflict myth was ingrained in the Irish nationalist consciousness, Adams saw a chance to win himself a place in the nationalist pantheon by claiming the kudos for bringing the '800-year-old conflict' to an end.

BRENTROCKAFELLAR

9:57 PM ET

I agree with Pierce

As another O'Reilly, it was hard for me to take the article seriously after reading "catholic loyalist".

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11:58 PM ET

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FARNAZ

3:44 AM ET

August 28, 2010

MOve on, America

Prospects for a just solution ended with the failure of Oslo. It's over. Done. The "settlers" will leave just as soon as the Protestants exit Northern Ireland. Or the Irish do.

Drop it, America. Move on.

CARADOC

7:55 AM ET

Cherished land

A college friend of mine is an aboriginal native who still lives on a 'reserve'. We have a standing joke...I ask him 'How's everyone on the Rez?' to which he replies 'We're all still wondering when you guys are going home.'

Their land is cherished, so what are we doing on it? Shouldn't we honour their wishes? I asked this once of an Israeli-born guy I worked with, and he replied 'They weren't using it'. His arrogance was sickening. How long do people have to occupy a land before it is theirs? Obviously in the case of the Palestinians, forever is still not long enough. The least the Israeli's can do is offer cash for the improvements the Palestinians have made over the past two thousand years...fat chance on that, I'm sure.

SINSEMILLA

2:20 PM ET

Not to mention rife with disease

and illiteracy, peasantry and servitude. Hell, even the Arabs think so:

According to the editor of the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, “[it]is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterized them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country” [20].

JOHN ADAMS

9:00 PM ET

Propaganda, propaganda, racist propaganda

Exactly what we have come to expect from the non-Semite variety of Jew.

1:50 AM ET

August 29, 2010

Propaganda from Al-Ahram?

The Egyptian newspaper vouched for independence by Reporters Without Borders?

6:34 AM ET

Narrow

So, 'not using the land to my standards' is now an excuse for ethnic cleansing?

8:42 AM ET

Nice buzzword

Very intellectual.

AKAMAD

Must do some Gardening

I must mow the lawn this weekend. I wouldn't want someone coming along saying they were going to steal my garden because it was unkept, and I didn't own it anyway because I was one God's chosen Blacks.

9:59 PM ET

Poor argument

No land was stolen prior to the 67 occupation. We can agree that israel needs to give that land back, but notice we are talking about pre 48 here. By implying that israel doesn't have a right to exist, you are only strengthening the Jewish extremists and you also effectively silence the Israeli Left, the only group that can get Israel and Palestine out of this mess.

NICHOLAS WIBBERLEY

8:57 AM ET

The comparison is too literal

The comparison with Northern Ireland should not be viewed and dismissed in all this detail. Hegel said: “A satisfactory solution must make room for both sides in a dispute. It is not enough to say that one side is wrong and the other right. A resolution requires rising above opposing principles to a level at which they are reconciled”. And that is what Mitchell helped happen in NI and what must one day be accomplished here. These peoples have to share, and live together in that rich land that has been so mercilessly fought over since time beyond record.

AVNER STEIN

8:09 PM ET

Northern Ireland analogy

Palestinian groups have spend a lot of time and effort trying to link their struggle with the Irish resistance against British imperialism. The PLO even offered to sell weapons to the IRA.

But the analogy falls flat when looking at the history of Palestinian violence, in contrast to the irrelevant fight between Irish militants and the British army.

This is the same as Europeans who have drawn comparisons between Hezbollah and the IRA.

The IRA and Palestinian movements are different in many ways. The first of which is of course violence and military reach. The Palestinian-Israel war is far more violent than the British-Irish war. Less than 6,000 people were killed during the troubles, while over 20,000 have been killed in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and another 30,000 in the Palestinian-Arab conflict.

The IRA did not have the weapons, money, or resources the Palestinians do. Hamas and Fatah make the IRA look like green peace.

People like Obama and liberals in Europe forget how Britain defeated the IRA. It wasn't through peace talks or good-faith gestures. The British army infiltrated their ranks, recruited informers and turned the information to loyalists that targeted IRA members in an extra-judicial style.

The IRA was suffocated and could not force a British withdrawal. The IRA couldn't even protect itself from intra-fighting.

Don't forget - it was the IRA that begged for talks when they realized they could not defeat British in an armed-struggle. That premise made the talks successful.

With the Palestinians, Israel is dealing with foreign benefactors - Iran and Saudi Arabia. Whatever deal the state makes with the Palestinians, the Saudi godfathers could always order a reboot in conflict.

The Palestinians are also in a much better position politically. The IRA was a recognized terrorist movement and the UN, Europe, America, or anyone else try to but in and destroy Britain through the UN or other international lawfare games.

From the surface it is easy to draw comparisons between the IRA and the Palestinians, mostly because Palestinian supporters have become experts at propaganda, but when looking at the facts they have nothing in common.

8:20 PM ET

They do have some things in common

They have apparent intractability in common. Also religious extremism. Just look at this guy I just found on Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/shas-spiritual-leader-abbas-and-palestinians-should-perish-from-this-world-1.310800 Paisley used to rabbit on like that, frothing at the mouth about the 'whore of Babylon'.

8:52 PM ET

Colonialism by any other name would still smell as rotten

And so would racism that is part and parcel everyday Jew life in America and Israel.

1:53 AM ET

Every day jew life? Anti-semite much?

Everyone knows not all Jews live in a daily-propaganda-life whatever. That is offense and racist. It is the religious nutjobs that hate the palestinians, and by attacking israel as a whole, you are strengthening their movement. So stop being a bigot.

ANDERSONW

10:03 PM ET

WTF

This whole article is a complete disgrace. You havn't the first clue about what happened here in Northern Ireland.

NORBOOSE

11:42 AM ET

The biggest difference

There are a lot of differences between the two situations, but one makes the analogy basically useless. The difference is the relation of the outside world to the conflict. In Ireland, noone outside of the British Isles wanted anything other than a resolution to the conflict. There wasnt much international political and ideological arguments about it, and Ireland didnt have any practical strategic or economic value to anyone. In the Middle East, nothing could be farther from the truth. Large segments of the world population are deeply emotionally entrenched in support of one side or the other. Nations and other powerful organizations have important ties to both sides. Seeing the conflict as some sort of Star-Trek -style "just get them to accept eachothers differences" conflict is painfully naive. This problem can not be resolved only in Palestine and Israel, too much of the world has too much of a stake in the conflict to let that happen.

A BALANCED VIEW

11:45 AM ET

Andersonw, While I am sure

Andersonw,

While I am sure you are right, that this author appears to have little understanding of the situation, it is the entire and misleading premise of the article
that is grossly mistaken.

No one ever posited that everything hinged upon the similarity or dissimilarity of the situation in Ireland and Israeli occupied territories. Mitchell's ability is independent of the situation at hand, he is a good negotiator and peace enabler.

The situation is what it is, and does not need to be further diminished in the minds of readers by this ridiculous comparison. Rather, It seems obvious that no two such situation are ever very similar, and come with their own challenges.

In this one, however, the US is suffering blow back terror at home and abroad, and our constant challenge of maintaining oil price availability and price in the middle east is being compromised by Israel's actions (condemned by the Geneva convention) over the decades.

It could be said that the US has a great deal more to gain by ending the settlements and occupation than by ending the "troubles". Perhaps Mitchell has not entirely tipped his hand yet.

Tryly, a

BOREDWELL

5:43 PM ET

Peace Pals

I applaud Mitchell's hopefulness. But Palestinian hope (a homeland!) is a slanderous thing to the Israelis and Israeli hope (never a homeland!) is antithetical to the Palestinians. To put it bluntly, the Palestinians hope the Israelis will all just F.O. and die. And the Israelis hope the Palestinians will all just F.O. and die. But that's not going to happen though Israel has tried to kill, starve, rob and blockade them into submission. Maybe, if Israel can manage it, HAMAS will die.. But HAMAS would be reincarnated. No real hope there, either. So, given the perpetual impasse, the intransigent Israelis will continue to expand settlements unimpeded and kill Palestinians whenever they feel it is in their best interests. And Palestinian land will shrink, suicide bombers will respond, rockets will be launched and Israelis killed. Now Hezbollah and Sunnis have started up again in Lebanon. And Iran is powering up its nuclear capacity. Israel may feel impelled to react at some point if it calculates either Lebanon or Iran needs to be nipped in the bud. Add Syria to the toxic mix in Lebanon; and if things boil over there then Palestine will be left to sit and stew on the perennial international back burner. Hope, at this point, is not even a diamond in the rough. The administration must know it can't even hope for any change here. This will turn out to be another bad, sad show.

8:14 PM ET

Sorry, but you could not be

Sorry, but you could not be more wrong, per just about every poll taken in the Occupied Territories and Israel; There is a great deal more in common between the average people in both camps than you are insinuating. It is the radicals on both sides who are furthest apart; and the radicals on the Palestinian side are now largely sidelined, (in Gaza) while the radicals in Israel are currently in power, but may be facing a GREAT deal more pressure behind the scenes than they ever have before.

End the occupation. Remove most settlers except those that closely hug Israel borders, then trade Israeli land to offset the loss. Pay for the return of most refugees to the new Palestinian state in the west bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. A very few are allowed to return to Israel.
Install a UN or quartet peace keeping force, (mostly Arab, If possible) to keep the IDF, the settlers and the factions away from areas that could spark new conflict. Obviously, East Jerusalem is Palestinian, with some accommodations made to ensure world wide access to holy sites.

This plan would work and be accepted by most Israelis and Palestinians.

10:08 PM ET

Agreed, Balanced View

I really hope it happens.

11:41 PM ET

Straight from Camp David Accords

A similar offer was provided and it was not only rejected by the Palestinians, no counter-offer was provided. Even fellow Palestinians were shocked that Arafat unilaterally rejected the offer.

Israel agreed to remove major settlement blocs and swap Arab cities with Jewish settlements for a future Palestine state. An internationally-financed fund would be set up in coordination with Israel that would enable decedents of refugees displaced to acquire compensation for whatever "injustices" they might have experienced. Palestinians who were split up from their families in Israel could seek citizen in the Israeli state if they have relatives who are Israeli Arabs.

Oh yeah, East Jerusalem was offered as a Palestinian state.

This is about as close as the maxililist Palestinians were going get, and they rejected everything.

That was 10 years ago.

Any peace-plan today will be less than half of whatever goodies the Palestinians would have received in 2000.

ultimately, the "occupation" ends when the violence ends. Palestinians have no incentive to create a state because they don't need one. They already have billions a year in free money from the EU, endless attention from the world media, special UN agencies tailored for their needs, an industry of leftists and scholars gushing to support whatever narrative they release.

Why should they make peace? You have any idea how much poverty existed before the occupation began? Now Israel has trained Palestinian farmers. Israel is working to a build a first ever Palestinian city. IDF works and trains with Palestinian security forces to fight Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Violence is down considerable, less than 10 Palestinians killed in 2010 in the West Bank.

I think right now the Israel/Palestinians are doing fine. They don't need biased 3rd party interference. Any peace process based on a false premise could very well blow up, and lead to another intifada.

But that is what the Left wants. They need their Palestinians to be "oppressed" or else the Marxist class-based struggle propaganda narrative would collapse.

Users like Balance are butthurt over the peace Israel has established. They need violence and conflict. It is their life support.

KIPCHUK

11:34 PM ET

It's a zero-sum game

Obama is in a fantasy land. In effect he's forced a "Beer Summit" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian faction who won the last election, decisively, in 2006 in Gaza and the West Bank, was Hamas. They were dispossessed of their victory at the point of a gun by Israel and the West installing Fatah gunmen in a dictatorship over the West Bank and banning Hamas legislators. Abbas is a propped up sock puppet. Didn't his term as President end a year and a half ago with no legitimate election since? This is farce that inevitably will turn into another, and largest yet, tragedy.

JTAYLER

11:37 AM ET

September 5, 2010

Who knows how this will turn out

"Obama is in a fantasy land. In effect he's forced a "Beer Summit" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian faction who won the last election, decisively, in 2006 in Gaza and the West Bank, was Hamas. They were dispossessed of their victory at the point of a gun by Israel and the West installing Fatah gunmen in a dictatorship over the West Bank and banning Hamas legislators. Abbas is a propped up sock puppet. Didn't his term as President end a year and a half ago with no legitimate election since? This is farce that inevitably will turn into another, and largest yet, tragedy."

Guess we'll have to wait and see.

OYUNCU

1:59 AM ET

September 6, 2010

the hope

I think that way we will all win.

YARINSIZ

8:04 AM ET

September 25, 2010

And Palestinian land will

And Palestinian land will shrink, suicide bombers will respond, rockets will be launched and Israelis killed. Now Hezbollah and Sunnis have started up again in Lebanon. And Iran is powering up its nuclear capacity. Israel may feel impelled to react at some point if it calculates either Lebanon or Iran needs to be nipped in the bud. Add Syria to the toxic mix in Lebanon; and if things boil over there then Palestine will be left to sit and stew on the perennial international back burner. Hope, at this point, is not even a diamond in the rough.

Foreign Policy Magazine

Inside National Security

Obama's peace negotiator thinks his success in Northern Ireland should give us hope in the Middle East. But does the analogy really hold?

BY JAMES TRAUB | AUGUST 27, 2010

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