Amid a growing call for Israel to negotiate with Hamas just as Great Britain negotiated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), Eamonn MacDonagh responds in On the False Parallel Between Gaza and Northern Ireland, in the December 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine by saying that such comparisons are a “fairy tale” that “actually makes peace less likely by recommending capitulation to terrorism rather than a determined and patient fight against it.”
MacDonagh explains the historical and ideological differences between the two conflicts, but in one paragraph demonstrates how absurd it is to project the British experience into the Middle East.
In order to grasp just how far this is from the Middle East conflict, readers should imagine a future in which terrorist masterminds Mohammed Deif (if he is still alive) and Khaled Mashaal are prominent political leaders of a Judea and Samaria Autonomous Region of Israel. They stand politely when “Hatikvah” is played, condemn political violence in all its forms, speak the language of human rights and equality, and claim that their new role is simply a continuation of the struggle for Palestinian national rights by other means. Even more amazingly, the bulk of their followers believe and vote for them. Just how ridiculous this scenario sounds illustrates the chasm separating Hamas from the Provisional IRA in terms of political culture, methods, and aims.
Part of the reason this sounds ridiculous is because of the difference between the respective ideologies of the IRA and of Hamas.
Unlike Islamic radicalism, Irish nationalism has always been somewhat ideologically underdeveloped. Nonetheless, a few things can be said with certainty about the worldview of the Provisional IRA. Most importantly, perhaps, the Provos did not see the conflict as a zero-sum game. They did not advocate the genocide or ethnic cleansing of the Protestant majority, did not claim that London was the true capital of Ireland, and were not motivated by an ideology of racial or religious supremacism. Their slogan “Brits Out!” referred to the British state alone, not the Protestant community loyal to it.
On a larger scale, the Provisional IRA did not see itself as just one part of a grand holy war against the presence of a Protestant community in Northern Ireland. Unlike Hamas, the Provos never had the benefit of an Iran or a Qatar to provide it with consistent material and moral support. They did not enjoy the solidarity of a global movement of fundamentalist Catholics willing to use terrorism and mass murder to achieve their religious aims. Nor did they have a growing chorus of sympathizers in the Western liberal democracies. At best, they had to rely on the occasional gift of arms from the crazed Libyan tyrant Muammar Qaddafi and what money deluded immigrants in the bars of Boston and New York could be persuaded to part with.
Even after its defeat this past summer in Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has not moderated its stance towards Israel. Rather than focusing on rebuilding Gaza, it is focused on preparing to fight Israel again, celebrating violence against Jews and Israel, and feuding with the Palestinian Authority.
[Photo: Jorge Royan / WikiCommons ]