Our ‘studenty’ stance on Palestine does us no good
With local elections approaching, there will no doubt be a huge focus on… the Palestinian question. Politicians like to get worked up about things they can do nothing about. It enables them to share the anger of ordinary people and direct it elsewhere.
It might be for that reason that the Government is making a big play on the question of statehood for Palestine. The first leader of another country that new Taoiseach Simon Harris met was not, as you’d expect, British prime minister Rishi Sunak, but Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez.
Given our nearest and most important foreign relationship is with the UK, that was a surprise. Whatever about the Northern Ireland situation — our most important foreign policy concern — the issue of the migration of asylum-seekers from Britain via Northern Ireland shows that the relationship with the UK is one that needs work.
So why is the Coalition spending valuable political energy on a conflict that is far away and in which we have little skin in the game?
An obvious answer might be that the tragedy in Gaza is one that demands a robust diplomatic response. Israel’s behaviour since the brutal attacks by Hamas last year is inhumane, disproportionate and probably counterproductive to Israel’s long-term strategic interests. But it invites the question: why is Ireland not taking an equal interest in other humanitarian crises in other parts of the world?
The Irish focus on Israel is odd. And it predates the Israeli attacks against Gaza. In fact, within hours of news of the Hamas atrocities, there were prominent Irish politicians expressing solidarity with Hamas. But well before that, Ireland tended to side with the Palestinian Arabs. Frank Aiken told the Dáil in 1969 that the plight of Palestinian refugees following the Six-Day War in 1967 was a major focus of Irish foreign policy.
Ireland’s broad foreign policy goal can be characterised as concern for the rights of small nations or peoples against larger or more powerful aggressors. It is born of the position the newly independent Irish State found itself, with a more powerful British neighbour.
It manifests itself in support for a rules-based order and an attachment to multilateral political organisations, such as the UN, that mitigate small states’ military weakness. It does all this within the ambit of the Western economic system of which we and Israel are a part, and which relies for protection on a military alliance Ireland refuses to be a part of.
Like every other state, Ireland is hypocritical, and the hypocrisy is useful in revealing our true priorities. Ireland is willing to kowtow to China in order to sell a bit of milk. Yet there is no popular uprising against the clearly malevolent Chinese Communist Party.
It is probably that, in a very simplistic way, the Israel-Palestine conflict maps on to what Irish people see as our struggle against the British — with Israel/Britain the aggressor and Palestine/Ireland the oppressed. There is a tendency to see Israel as a “little Jewish Ulster”. That is how many, if not most, Irish people see it.
Public opinion is massively on the side of the Palestinians. But political conflicts are not football matches. Rooting for one side to win is rarely how political leaders can operate. The tragedy of foreign policy is that it is a huge but unsolvable Rubik’s Cube. Fix one thing, and you push another out of line.
Defeat for Israel, though perhaps popular among many in the “peace movement” in Ireland, won’t lead to peace. It would certainly make things worse, not least by encouraging Iran. Which is why many Arab countries in the Middle East, such as Jordan, who have to live with the consequences of what happens, have been very circumspect in their approach.
But it is hardly even helpful to Irish interests. By making Palestinian statehood central to Irish foreign policy, Simon Harris is choosing this over other things he could be doing. Governments can only really focus on at most five things at the same time. You can’t make significant changes to housing and migration and health without something giving.
Our willingness to block defence bonds in the EU might win plaudits here — but Michael McGrath’s decision seems naive and will isolate Ireland from EU partners. Not so long ago we were calling on them for solidarity over Brexit, and before that, in our financial crisis.
The decision to isolate ourselves from mainstream opinion might be taken for an admirable moral stand, but it’s really that it plays well at home. Just as Brit bashing during Brexit felt good, the pro-Palestinian position does, too.
But just as we found that degrading key relationships with our neighbours was not in our long-term interest, we may soon find the same of our student-union stance on Israel.