What lies ahead on rocky path to recognition for the Palestinian state by Ireland?

Israeli freedom fighters of the 1940s took inspiration from those in the Irish War of Independence such as Dan Breen and Tom Barry and were keen readers of their memoirs. In a strange turnaround, for many years now Irish republicans have empathised with Palestine, while loyalists in the North have tended to identify with Israel.

Ireland’s path of formal recognition for the state of Palestine has been a strange one that has seen a gradual shift from total support for Israel to a position of clear empathy for the people of Palestine.

But it has been a very slow process. Many will be surprised to note that in 1980, Ireland became the first EU state to back the principle of Palestinian statehood. But moving on to formal Irish recognition for an independent Palestine has taken almost half-a-century.

EU leaders met yesterday and will meet again today for what was originally planned as an economic summit, but is now dominated by the real threat of an Iran-Israel war.

It is interesting to reflect on that journey as new Taoiseach Simon Harris attends his first such leaders’ gathering.

This is an opportunity for him to explain Ireland’s change of policy on Palestine.

It will be interesting to see how he gets on, as he lacks the EU experience of his predecessors. Enda Kenny had been attending meetings of political allies in the European People’s Party for years before he went to his first EU summit in 2011, and Leo Varadkar was an ardent Europhile going way back to his days in Young Fine Gael.

Back to Palestinian recognition: Micheál Martin’s announcement in the Dáil last week, on the same day Harris was elected Taoiseach, that Ireland and several EU allies will soon formally recognise Palestine was a hugely important diplomatic acknowledgment of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank.

The fury of Israel’s reaction shows the announcement was also a successful rebuke to Israel’s excessive aggression in Gaza and its continuing rejection of a two-state solution.

Disappointingly, Israel’s response included criticisms of Ireland as antisemitic, despite the Government’s unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas atrocities last October 7, since which Israeli forces have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.

Staying with the rocky road to Palestinian recognition, in 2014 the Oireachtas passed motions urging the then government to officially recognise the Palestine state based on the 1967 borders and to make East Jerusalem its capital.

Those motions noted UN resolutions that recognised the two-state solution was the best path to resolve conflict in the region.

But the government did not act on those votes.

It cited the need to preserve a common EU foreign policy while also working to build consensus at the decision-making EU Council and getting the EU generally to adopt a stance more critical of Israel.

Traditional unequivocal support for Israel, for historical legacy reasons, by EU states Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic made this Irish approach a faint hope, leaving this country as an outlier in its support for Palestine.

Israel successfully argued that EU recognition of Palestine would be premature and risked pre-empting potential agreement reached between it and Palestine in any final settlement talks.

The problem is that the framework for any such Israel-Palestine settlement turned around the 1993 Oslo peace accords and their promise of a twostate solution.

This process has long ceased to function and Israel has for some years refused to engage in negotiations.

What really has changed now is that countries like Spain, Slovenia and Malta have also declared they will recognise Palestine.

Neither Ireland nor any of these countries’ governments are trying to deny Hamas are brutal terrorists – but they cannot stay silent as Israel flouts international law and human rights.

Making his announcement in the Dáil last week, Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Mr Martin stressed the moribund state of the Oslo process.

“The undermining of the Oslo accords and therefore the agreement to create two states has reached a point where the accords’ approach of recognition after a final agreement is not credible or tenable any longer,” he said.

Critics of Ireland’s policy shift on recognition have wrongly dubbed it “empty rhetoric”.

True, there are many practical impediments to progress on this Middle East war, which remains a threat to broader peace.

But the past six months of conflict have shown why we must try to change things.