British commentators on the Arab-Israeli struggle just can’t resist drawing analogies with the Northern Ireland conflict and, in particular, how it was resolved. I’ve already argued that they tend to draw the wrong conclusions from what happened in Ireland over the last 40 years but this article by Jonathan Freedland obliges me to do so again.

Cue moody uillean pipe music and establishing shot of a rain-lashed Belfast street and away we go…

Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland, once a byword for strife, is now an invocation of hope. If republicans and unionists - who once wished each other dead - can sit in government together, then surely Israelis and Palestinians are not fated to fight for ever.

We’re off to a bad start here straight away. Barring the odd psycho on either side, neither the unionists nor the republicans wanted to exterminate their opponents. They were, however, willing to kill fairly limited numbers of them in order to achieve political objectives. It’s not a small difference.

It’s a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same: none ever are. The wildest elements of the IRA were never committed, even rhetorically, to the destruction of Great Britain.

Freedland might have added that that neither did the wildest elements of the IRA think that the British people were the spearhead of global conspiracy that threatened all the free people of the world.

Yet Hamas’s charter does call for the eradication of the state of Israel. (Those close to the organisation insist the document has in effect lapsed.)

Wouldn’t be good to know a little more about that lovely word “lapsed”? What does it mean, exactly? Has there been an announcement? Did I miss it? If the spittle-flecked racist screed is no longer Hamas’s guiding policy document, what would the hard part in saying so be?

Moreover, whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. There was state collusion in killings, but the British army did not bomb entire buildings in the Falls Road because it suspected an IRA cell lurked within.

True. There’s good reason to think though, that the British state connived in mass casualty terrorist attacks in the Republic of Ireland. The IRA was not defeated by strict adherence to the Queensberry Rules.

Nevertheless, there are important similarities. The two sides were fighting over the future of a small piece of territory. The unionist majority often complained that it stood alone, uncomprehended by the rest of the world.

There might have some whining to this effect but any such complaint was obviously nonsense. The Unionists had the full might of the British state with them throughout the conflict.

Demographics mattered, the notion that one group might soon outnumber the other. And religion was never far below the surface.

True, there was a religious element involved but the Protestant demographic advantage is still not seriously threatened.

What though of the solution? There are at least a few steps that brought eventual peace to Northern Ireland that could be emulated in the Middle East - but they would require an enormous leap of imagination on all sides. Perhaps the very first move would be a true declaration of intent from Israel. This would be an analogue of the statement in 1990 by the then Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, that the British government had no “selfish strategic or economic interest” in retaining the province. If Israel were to make an equally unambiguous declaration that it planned to end its occupation of the West Bank and dismantle the settlements necessary to make room for a viable Palestinian state, that could have a similarly profound effect.

Ah, what we need is a true declaration of intent from Israel. I presume this means that Freedland is aware that the policy of the present government of Israel is to reach a two state settlement with the Palestinians but he doesn’t think that it is sincere about this. Naturally, he doesn’t mention the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza as perhaps - I am speculating really wildly here - being evidence that Israel wanted to be shot of ruling the Palestinians. And he also doesn’t mention that notwithstanding Peter Brooke’s emollient words, British rule in Northern Ireland is today more entrenched than ever.

Those who say no Israeli would ever be so bold should read the extraordinary interview Ehud Olmert gave to Yediot Achronot the day he tendered his resignation last September. “We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories,” Olmert said. Signalling that he understood the wisdom of the Brooke manoeuvre, he suggested that Menachem Begin’s “genius” in forging a peace with Egypt was that he “started from the end. He began by saying, ‘I am ready to pull out of the entire Sinai - now let us negotiate’.”

Freedland is starting to confuse me here. If what we need is a true declaration of intent from Israel, why should we believe this?

The second move has to take place inside the heads of both sides: it is the realisation that no military solution will ever be possible. The road to peace in Northern Ireland began when the British army concluded it could never fight the IRA to more than an “honourable draw” and when the IRA realised it would never bomb British troops out of the province. Hamas has similarly to conclude that suicide bombs on Israeli buses and rockets aimed at Israel’s southern towns will delay, not bring, an end to occupation. Israel has to understand that a movement like Hamas, rooted in the soil of Gaza, cannot be crushed by force. That, on the contrary, raining fire on Gaza will have the same effect on Hamas that internment had on the IRA: it will recruit a new generation of fighters, making it stronger not weaker.

This is really interesting. Freedland thinks that British policy in Northern Ireland was set by the British armed forces, rather than a series of elected governments. It’s also interesting that he doesn’t seem to realize that the war in Northern Ireland ended with a defeat for the IRA, a graceful defeat, certainly, but still a defeat. They wanted to destroy the Northern Ireland state and incorporate it into the Republic of Ireland and settled for the early release of their prisoners and a role in governing the province.

The next stage is the hardest. Adams has called on Israel to enter direct dialogue with Hamas, learning the Irish lesson that for peace to work it must include even those on the extremes. But it’s not quite that simple. Republicans did not get their seat at the table until they had forsworn violence and agreed to pursue their goals by exclusively peaceful means. Israel could truthfully cite the Ulster precedent when it says it cannot sit down with Hamas until it renounces violence.

Freedland is basically right here. For my own part I’d say that in the case of Israel and Hamas, recognition was more of a crunch issue than renouncing violence.

Yet such a statement would be fraught with risk. Because what has been the key advice of those republicans who have met Hamas leaders? Keep the movement together. It helps no one if the Hamas top brass follow Sinn Féin’s lead and sign up for peaceful means, only for a “Real Hamas” to pop up the next day to take their place. Adams and Martin McGuinness resisted any move that would cause a republican split. The result is that when they were finally ready to do a deal, the deal held.

The point he is making here contradicts his previous one. The deal held even though Adams and McGuiness had made the key concession of only pursuing their goals by democratic means at the start of the main negotiations.

Once negotiations have begun, Northern Ireland offers paradoxical advice: each side must strengthen its adversary. London and Dublin were always careful to ensure that any move on either the nationalist or unionist side did not go unrewarded. If it had, those making the compromises would have lost face in the eyes of their own people.

Yes, but always within the context of Northern Ireland remaining within the UK. The British were prepared to be flexible once their enemy had abandoned its core demand.

Israel has not been as wise. Hamas is strong now in part because their Fatah rivals were made to look like dupes before their fellow Palestinians. They gave up the “armed struggle”, they recognised Israel - and what did they get for it? More checkpoints and settlers on the West Bank than before.

Good point.

In this context, one of the greatest missed opportunities was the 2005 Israeli pullout from Gaza. Instead of symbolically handing over the territory to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, thereby giving the moderates a prize, Israel withdrew unilaterally - allowing Hamas to claim it as a victory for violence.

Good point.

It is too late to undo that now. Instead Israel will have to emulate the long, patient work that finally brought peace to Northern Ireland. It will have to use indirect channels to reach those within Hamas - and they exist - who are reconcilable. It will then have to cajole and encourage them towards the position that would enable them to be part of peace talks.

Much of the long, patient work that brought peace to Northern Ireland consisted of wearing down the will of Sinn Féin and the IRA to resist British rule in Northern Ireland by force. Among the methods employed to do this were interrogation techniques amounting to torture, mass internment without trial and deniable assassinations. It’s good to keep these things in mind.

That need not take decades. There are elements within Hamas readier than most Israelis realise to negotiate an end to occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. But Israel has to decide that a meaningful peace is its goal too, starting with an understanding that this problem will never be solved by force. But it can be solved.

The problem will indeed never be solved by force alone, mainly because the side with the capacity to end the other’s ability to resist - Israel - wouldn’t employ that capacity in the past and shows no signs of being willing to do so now.

There can be no negotiations on matters of substance with Hamas until it recognizes Israel, or at the very least, shows serious signs of being prepared to do so. That’s the lesson that should be drawn from the Northern Ireland conflict.