Over at Harry’s Place a commenter called Tangoko, responding to a piece by Ben says,

In NI [Northern Ireland] it was impossible to meet the mutually exclusive demands of both groups in the same territory (for exclusive sovereignty) nor was it possible to partition again what had been partitioned. So they have to share sovereignty and power whether they like it or not. And believe me many do not.

This is a commonly held view and is about as wrong as wrong could be. Nevertheless, it’s often found forming part of a discourse directed at Israel that goes something like this; you make peace with your enemies not your friends, if the British government could negotiate with the Provos then why can’t you negotiate with Hamas? Look how splendidly power-sharing is operating in Northern Ireland now with Sinn Féin and the DUP working together, if they can, well surely you can, how difficult can it be?

Here are some facts.

1.

The Good Friday Agreement, on which the present settlement in Northern Ireland is based and which the Provos signed, acknowledges that [Constitutional Issues 1, (iii)]

…while a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and, accordingly, that Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people.

So there is no question whatsoever of any shared sovereignty, Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom and the Provos have acknowledged that it is right and proper that it should do so. Of course, there are other articles in the agreement that talk about the all the parties being happy to change that status in the future if a majority of the people in Northern Ireland wish to do so but the chances of that happening anytime sooner than the very distant future are somewhere between extremely slim and zero.

Mention should also be made of the various cross-border and inter-governmental talking shops set up by the agreement. A mention and nothing more because they don’t do anything to erode British sovereignty over Northern Ireland anymore than they limit the sovereignty of Ireland over its territory.  And one final point, the agreement led to Ireland abandoning its constitutional claim to the island’s six north-eastern counties.

2.

Purveyors of this discourse seem to think that the Provos entered negotiations from a position of strength. They did not. They only became seriously interested in negotiations when their capacity for violence had been greatly reduced by a 20 year counter-insurgency campaign that included mass internment without trial, juryless courts, interrogation techniques amounting to torture and the deniable, targeted assassination of activists. Attempts to negotiate with them in the 1970s got nowhere because all they were interested in talking about was setting a date for British withdrawal and they were confident that the if the British couldn’t be persuaded to graciously cede at the negotiating table, they could be forced to leave Northern Ireland anyway because the British public wouldn’t be able to stomach the cost in blood and money of maintaining the union. Negotiations between the Brits and the Provos only got serious when the latter realised that they had reached the end of the road militarily and that if the war continued the British held all the aces.

3.

The IRA never called for the uprooting of Protestant “settlements” in Northern Ireland and never called for Catholics to be given back the land the planters took from them. Provo ideology held that the Protestants were suffering from a kind of false consciousness imposed on them by the UK government; once the UK government decided it didn’t want to stay in Northern Ireland any more, they would come to their senses and realise that their best interests lay in cheerfully integrating themselves into a 32 county socialist republic. It’s complete nonsense, but at least it contains no element of winding the clock to some sort of pre-plantation Shangri La and no suggestion that the Protestants belong anywhere other than where they are.

4.

Provo ideology - though they betrayed it a thousand times with bloody sectarian deeds - was based on the Enlightenment, the unity of Catholic, Protestant and dissenter and the defense of the men of no property. Many of the ideological precursors of Provoism were Protestants and the central ritual of its annual calendar of commemorations was and remains the visit to the grave of Wolfe Tone at Bodenstown. It’s kind of hard to imagine any of the leadership of Hamas visiting the grave of any Jew for any purpose whatsoever.

5.

The disjunction between the foul sectarian massacres of Provoism and its, in certain respects, laudable ideals is not a small matter. If a group or a nation commits itself to high ideals and then proceeds to do things that go directly against that stance they can be called on it - and if they are called on it often enough then it tends to make a difference. This gap between words and actions undoubtedly played a part in the chipping away of support for nationalist violence in Northern Ireland. The ideology of Hamas, on the other hand, is based on racial hatred and the supremacy of one religion over all others. Check out their charter if you have any doubts on this. You can call them a lot of things but not hypocrites.

5.

Hamas isn’t fighting for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, it’s fighting to replace Israel with such a state. So, for the comparison with the Provos to be valid they would have had to have been seeking to conquer the entire UK and make London the capital of Ireland.

6.

Hamas isn’t fighting alone; it’s fighting with the explicit and acknowledged aid of a regional power, Iran, whose leaders never tire of repeating that they want to see Israel destroyed. The Provos never enjoyed the unbridled support of an oil-rich foreign power. Noraid collections in bars in New York and Boston don’t bear a second’s comparison with the role of Iran, a state openly bent on the destruction of Israel - not on helping Palestinians or Palestine into existence as a state like any other - and the rapid acquisition of the means to do so.

7.

And after thirty years trying to destroy Northern Ireland the Provos essentially settled for a limited role in the administration of it and the release of their prisoners on license. The British state is still in full control of the main levers of power and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, or ever. If the Northern Ireland conflict has anything to teach us about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, it is that negotiations on substantive issues with the present rulers of the Gaza strip will be a waste of time as long as they continue to believe that they have viable military options.