SAN FRANCISCO — This has been a fascinating week for students of conflict resolution who have had one eye on Northern Ireland and the other on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Both of these appear to be intractable conflicts, going back many decades, involving similar kinds of dynamics. In both cases we have the use of political violence and terror, communal tensions, charges of occupation by foreign troops, harsh use of police powers, and parties that do not recognize the legitimacy of the other.
Yet Northern Ireland is on a path towards resolution, while the Arab-Israeli conflict remains mired in chronic tensions and eruptions of occasional wars. During the past week the parties to the Northern Ireland conflict met again for a renewed attempt to resume and complete the implementation of the agreement they had reached in 1998, the historic Good Friday Agreement. That accord saw the principal parties, the Roman Catholic Sinn Fein and the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, agree to share power in a new government in which they both sat in the parliament and the executive branch. The agreement was suspended four years ago, though many of its political goals have been achieved. Northern Ireland has been relatively peaceful, the Irish Republican Army has ³decommissioned² its arms, and large-scale or recurring clashes between the two communities, or between the Irish and the British police, have ceased.
Northern Ireland is more polarized than ever into distinct neighborhoods and villages, and the two principal communities have not mixed happily in a single unified society. But the political violence that plagued them has stopped, as most citizens get on with the business of expanding their economy and improving life prospects for their children. The process is working.
The British and Irish governments convened a meeting of the principal parties last week to complete the process and revive the agreement to share power in national institutions of governance. They put forth a compromise formula that would implement a series of steps to restore the power-sharing government (executive and assembly) in Northern Ireland by next March, and provided for an election or referendum that would allow citizens to endorse the agreement once the leaders signed on.
Why is this relevant to the Middle East? Several important points about the Northern Ireland process stand out. For one thing, it is working, and needs to be studied to grasp precisely why that is the case. It has not been fully implemented, but the region is no longer convulsed by political violence and terror. Any agreement that achieves that through negotiations deserves closer scrutiny.
It appears to be working primarily because of three reasons. First, it brought into the negotiating process all the key parties who were deemed to be legitimate in the eyes of their own communities, regardless of how other communities saw them. So Sinn Fein represented the IRA, regardless of the Unionists¹ revulsion for the IRA. The fact of being inclusive was an important element for success.
Second, the parties recognized that they would achieve, through peaceful negotiations, important gains that could not be achieved through continued militancy. Diplomacy that succeeded and offered a vision of a better future spurred a greater willingness to persist on the path of peaceful negotiations, and so all sides committed to peaceful resolution of their conflict.
Third, the external mediator — the United States — was at once persistent, patient and impartial. It did not take sides, but worked tirelessly to bridge gaps between the parties and offer mechanisms to restore confidence when it was shaken.
None of these elements exists today in the Arab-Israeli situation, and so it is not surprising that our region of the world witnesses destructive wars while Northern Ireland joins the ranks of the world’s wealthy societies. The sad irony is that as the Northern Ireland situation resumes its momentum towards a permanent settlement, its historic lessons for the Arabs and Israelis are ignored, even though many of the broad dynamics of both conflicts seem so similar.
For example, Israel and the United States refuse to deal with a Palestinian government led by Hamas, which was democratically elected. Yet in Northern Ireland the British and the United States had no problem dealing with the IRA, which used terror for many years. Their decision to engage the IRA through Sinn Fein proved wise and productive, because the IRA soon got out of the terror business and decommissioned its arms. That experience suggests that focusing on the substance of the political goals that one desires from a negotiation is more important than allowing oneself to get hung up on whom one should talk to or not talk to.
Israel and Hamas do not like or recognize each other, but they are both acting irresponsibly in continuing to avoid engaging each other in a political process that gives their people the possibility of living normal, peaceful lives. The same can be said of Iran and the United States. It is instructive for these and other parties in the region to ponder the Northern Ireland situation and acknowledge the importance of focusing on how to achieve desired outcomes that respond to the legitimate rights and needs of both parties to a conflict, rather than getting stalemated on false issues of honor and dishonor in engaging one’s adversaries. Northern Ireland has much to teach us all about the business of conflict resolution — and also about acting like adults.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 17 October 2006
Word Count: 897
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