What do the anti-colonial struggles of the Irish people have to do with Palestine?
Some words shared at our last demo from Alan Hubbard.
A few weeks ago, my partner Anna spoke here and began by telling the story of the women in her family’s resistance to the Nazi occupation of Belgium and the price they paid for it (Anna’s words can be found here). Karen then asked me to speak. Initially I did not know what to say because as far as I know my family have simply languished in a low-lying Lancashire swamp for generations and I have no inspirational tales to tell.
Fortunately, there is another rebel woman in Anna’s family tree so I will shamelessly appropriate her story. Anna’s paternal grandmother Peg Manahan stood with the Republicans in the Irish war of Independence running guns and carrying intelligence and participated in the liberation and repurposing of a Royal Irish Constabulary arsenal at the Battle of Ballylanders.
Eventually most of Ireland was freed from British rule. You may be asking yourselves at this point what has this got to do with Palestine? The anti-colonial struggles of the Irish people have mirrored and paralleled those of the Palestinians for nearly a century. In 1921 British imperialism set up a Protestant supremacist state in the NE of Ireland. In 1948 Britain enabled the setting up of a Jewish supremacist state in most of Palestine.
However, this gives me some hope. Relative peace and something approaching equality and justice has been achieved in Ireland following the Good Friday agreement and has lasted for nearly thirty years. I believe this provides a road map for achieving peace in Palestine/Israel and I want to highlight two valuable lessons which, among others, need to be learned.
First of all you have to talk to your enemies – you don’t make peace with your friends. The British government made lots of noises about not negotiating with terrorists but during the peace process terrorists were talked to and peace was achieved. Israel particularly needs to learn to do this – what they need to learn not to do is assassinate the person you are negotiating with as they did with Ismail Haniyeh earlier this year. That was a really, really bad thing to do.
Secondly both sides need to understand that the other side is not going to go anywhere. Palestine was never a land without a people for a people without a land because it was, and is, full of Palestinians. On the other hand, whatever you think of the wisdom of the Zionist project there are now several million Jewish people living in Israel/Palestine and, like the Ulster Protestants, they have no place else to go. There is no military solution to this impasse that does not involve genocide. Both sides have to find a way to either share the land or share the power in one land.
This may seem like a pipedream but many seemingly impossible things have happened in my lifetime. Not only peace in Northern Ireland but the end of apartheid and establishment of democracy in South Africa and the fall of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain in Europe. I hope and the secular equivalent of pray that I live to see a just and equal peace in Palestine-Israel.
The first step to this has to be Ceasefire Now!
