There is no peace in the Middle East. Because there is no effective peace process. This is not because Palestinians and Israelis do not know how to make peace. that’s right. The Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided clear guidance. They must do what the negotiating team, of which I was a part, did in Northern Ireland.
The problem is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally the United States, who have failed to apply the lessons of Northern Ireland to peacemaking in the Middle East.
To fully understand the tragedy this represents, we need to go back to the negotiations that achieved the Good Friday Agreement in 1997. At the time, I was working with two other of his academics, Fred Ball and Tom Hadden, based in Northern Ireland. We conduct various public opinion polls to gauge opinions on how to achieve peace.
My role as lead researcher for the Northern Ireland Peacebuilding and Public Policy Project (which is independent of government and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) is to develop relationships with all parties to the Northern Ireland peace process. was to develop and act as an informal negotiator. Manager of public opinion and public relations. The public was kept informed through reports and articles in the local newspaper, the Belfast Telegraph. In this process, it was important that people of all shades of political opinion not only participate, but also keep themselves well-informed.
Importantly, all parties to the Northern Ireland conflict, including the Irish Republican Army, represented by Sinn Féin, and the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Freedom Fighters, represented by political leaders the Progressive Unionists, are committed to peace negotiations for Northern Ireland. They were democratically elected to participate. Party and the Ulster Democratic Party respectively.
In total, I had to work with eight political parties to negotiate and agree on poll questions aimed at resolving issues that had not yet been resolved through formal negotiations.
Mechanism of “peace poll”
These “peace polls” are different from “partisan polls,” which aim to highlight public support for particular policies supported by one political party (most commonly the government). Instead, the poll that I created with partners from each of the eight political parties selected for formal negotiations will fairly and objectively measure public support for all possible policy options across the political spectrum, from both sides. was aimed at. The purpose was to determine the exact points of common ground, where it existed, or effective compromises if necessary to conclude peace.
Polls are an American invention, and fortunately for me, Bill Clinton’s Northern Ireland envoy and “consultation” chairman, Senator George Mitchell, took polls very seriously and told me as much as possible. provided support.
When Britain offered to run a voting project for both parties, both parties rebelled and insisted they work with me with funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. So I always made sure to hand-deliver the report to Mitchell and his associates the day before it was published. And as each poll report was released, deals were made until an agreement was reached that proved passable in a referendum, which was finally held on May 22, 1998.
The legitimacy of the Good Friday Agreement was ensured by the full democratic participation of all parties to the Agreement and the people of Northern Ireland. Opinion polls brought the people to the negotiating table, and a referendum led to an agreement.
Sadly, Israelis and Palestinians were unable to learn and apply the same peace lessons to conflict resolution.
when everything goes wrong
In January 2009, newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Mitchell as his special envoy for peace in the Middle East, with the hope that he would lead Israel and the Palestinians to a successful Good Friday Agreement peace process. After President Obama’s success in the 2008 presidential election, expecting to appoint Mr. Mitchell to the post, I was invited to conduct a poll on peace in Israel and Palestine.
In June 2009, I flew to Washington with an Israeli-Palestinian voting team. Presentations were organized in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, as well as in various think tanks, to brief all politicians and experts interested in Middle East peace.
I have been in touch with Mitchell and we met in his office at the State Department. At the time, I was also conducting a peace poll in Sri Lanka with the help of Norwegians. They are generous and reliable funders who have indicated that Mitchell would be willing to support my work in Israel and Palestine if he so desired.
Mr Mitchell welcomed the Norwegian proposal and arrangements were made to accept it, but all failed. My gut feeling was that the State Department wanted to control research to achieve its own goals. As a result, I was unable to obtain funding and Mr. Mitchell ultimately resigned from his position in May 2011 without achieving peace.
Of course, it could be argued that even if I had carried the lessons of the Northern Ireland peace process to Israel and Palestine, I would have failed. However, I have made all the necessary preparations for a successful conflict and have communicated with all parties to the conflict. I knew what I was doing – so did Mitchell when he accepted the appointment from Obama.
During the two-month interview period for the survey in November and December 2008, I met privately with all relevant parties, including then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres. did. My pollster, Mina Zemach, is a good friend of Mr. Peres and was a pollster when he led the Labor Party.
On the Palestinian side, the project’s organizer, the non-governmental organization One Voice, was founded in the 1950s by Yasir Arafat and others and had close ties to Fatah, the then-dominant political party within the Palestinian Authority. So I arranged a meeting with Hamas through the introduction of Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian politician and director of the Jerusalem Media Communication Center.
Talking to Hamas was like talking to Sinn Féin. They had an extreme bargaining position, but that was it, it was a bargaining position. Like Sinn Féin, they said they had legitimate grievances and were willing to co-operate with a peace poll. Of course, the impact of the October 7 attack on Hamas and Israel’s attack on Gaza significantly changed public opinion on all sides.
There was a time when many thought a peace agreement would never be reached in Northern Ireland, as violence continued on both sides of the issue while negotiations progressed. But such a tragedy could either doom negotiations or spur new efforts. People have a choice. we continued.
U.S. Department of State/Alamy Stock Photo
Importantly, the only important interlocutor who refused to meet with me in December 2008 was Prime Minister Netanyahu. He only agreed to send his chief of staff. Zemach said this is because he refuses to compromise on sharing Jerusalem as part of a peace deal. When he became Israel’s prime minister in March 2009, he refused to include Hamas in peace negotiations.
My experience has shown that excluding Sinn Féin and other paramilitary groups from Northern Ireland peace negotiations only led to failure, whereas their inclusion made a peace settlement possible. .
Other parties essential to the success of the Northern Ireland peace process were the central Alliance party and the Women’s Coalition.
The political equivalent in Israel was Meretz, a left-wing socialist party and strong supporter of the Peace Now movement. Like the Alliance, when I met with them they said they were willing to participate in a fully inclusive peace process, but they were excluded from negotiations because they are not part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government.
The Washington establishment had no problem with my contact with Hamas. In 2009, I also worked on a project with the U.S. Institute of Peace in Sudan. Although Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization, a lawyer from the Institute of Peace said he was willing to meet and talk with me as long as I provided no assistance. They advised me not to even buy coffee. I accepted this advice. Hamas provided coffee.
But peace could not be achieved without comprehensive negotiations that also reflected the people’s desire for an end to the bloodshed.
In 2013, while I was in New York for a meeting at the United Nations, I had the opportunity to visit the Mitchell law firm and asked them why they had resigned. He said this was because he did not receive sufficient support from the State Department. I was planning to reveal this in a book I was writing. However, trusted colleagues and friends advised me not to do so because it could negatively impact former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was campaigning for the presidency in the run-up to the 2016 election.
So I watered down the quote and mentioned the lack of sufficient support in Washington. It wasn’t false, but it wasn’t entirely true.
misplaced optimism
At the time, I was optimistic and thought that if Clinton became president, she would probably send my husband to the Middle East as a special envoy. Bill Clinton came very close to agreeing on the “Clinton Parameters” several years ago, but time ran out. And now we are here, with Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.
It is equally possible that my optimism is misplaced and that Mr. Clinton, and perhaps Joe Biden, who has always been a very strong supporter of Israel, did not want to oppose Mr. Netanyahu for domestic political reasons.
When the Good Friday Agreement was signed 25 years ago, both Mitchell and I thought Israel and Palestine would be next. But Al Gore, who had hoped we might be moving toward a peace deal, lost to Bush, then 9/11 happened, and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq took all the political oxygen out of the peace talks. I did.
And 15 years ago, we thought that would happen when Obama was elected. It should be. It is entirely possible that another opportunity will arise when the current war ends and the stakes for peace have been significantly raised by the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s response. Elections in the United States, Israel, and Palestine could put the peace process on hold again. But this should not prevent people of goodwill from speaking about peace. And history tells us it can work.
Sadly, Israel and Palestine are not alone in this cycle of violence and grief. The lessons of the Northern Ireland peace process are being ignored around the world. Frozen conflicts remain frozen at best, but become unstable and violent as their frequency increases. For centuries, the cost of war was often measured in “blood and treasure.” It is no exaggeration to say that since 2009, we have seen the “blood” of thousands of lives lost and the “treasure” of billions of dollars wasted time and time again in the Middle East and elsewhere. .