On the 92nd anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, our Middle East correspondent sees numerous parallels between the bloody, intractable conflicts in Ireland and Israel – and says that the war in Iraq has shown us the true value of neutrality
By Robert Fisk
".....This Easter, the 92nd anniversary of the Rising, it is intriguing to look at the parallels that connect Ireland and the Middle East. The "Black and Tans", whom Churchill supported when they took their revenge on Irish civilians in 1920, were later sent – again with Churchill's support – to Palestine, where they became the "British Gendarmerie" and continued their reprisals against Arab and Jewish civilians to considerable effect. Decades later, John Hume (Ireland's only living statesman) wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel and "Palestine" should take a page out of Ireland's Good Friday Agreement. It was all about compromise, he said.
He was wrong. Israel's settlements on Palestinian Arab land in the occupied territories were as illegal as the Protestant settlements and the dispossession of the Catholics in 16th-century Ireland. A closer historical symbol was Fallujah. Not long after the US 82nd Airborne killed 14 Iraqi civilians during a protest in 2003, the people of Derry wanted to twin with Fallujah. Had not the British Parachute Regiment killed 14 Irish civilians in Derry (13 on "Bloody Sunday", another died of wounds) in 1972? The offer was never taken up – but the message was valid enough: we must deal with injustice before we look for "compromise".
The relatives of the Bloody Sunday dead received a multi-million-pound inquiry. The relatives of the Fallujah dead were twice put under US siege until their city was almost destroyed.
Yet if Ireland is now truly at peace, I suspect it is not just for the simple reasons: the overwhelming self-awareness among the killers, the realisation by all (including the Brits) that there could be no military victory, and the emergence of the "Celtic Tiger" south of the border. I think Ireland's "differentness" also has something to do with it, not least its traditional neutrality......"
By Robert Fisk
".....This Easter, the 92nd anniversary of the Rising, it is intriguing to look at the parallels that connect Ireland and the Middle East. The "Black and Tans", whom Churchill supported when they took their revenge on Irish civilians in 1920, were later sent – again with Churchill's support – to Palestine, where they became the "British Gendarmerie" and continued their reprisals against Arab and Jewish civilians to considerable effect. Decades later, John Hume (Ireland's only living statesman) wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel and "Palestine" should take a page out of Ireland's Good Friday Agreement. It was all about compromise, he said.
He was wrong. Israel's settlements on Palestinian Arab land in the occupied territories were as illegal as the Protestant settlements and the dispossession of the Catholics in 16th-century Ireland. A closer historical symbol was Fallujah. Not long after the US 82nd Airborne killed 14 Iraqi civilians during a protest in 2003, the people of Derry wanted to twin with Fallujah. Had not the British Parachute Regiment killed 14 Irish civilians in Derry (13 on "Bloody Sunday", another died of wounds) in 1972? The offer was never taken up – but the message was valid enough: we must deal with injustice before we look for "compromise".
The relatives of the Bloody Sunday dead received a multi-million-pound inquiry. The relatives of the Fallujah dead were twice put under US siege until their city was almost destroyed.
Yet if Ireland is now truly at peace, I suspect it is not just for the simple reasons: the overwhelming self-awareness among the killers, the realisation by all (including the Brits) that there could be no military victory, and the emergence of the "Celtic Tiger" south of the border. I think Ireland's "differentness" also has something to do with it, not least its traditional neutrality......"
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