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Ulster’s lesson for the Middle East

Advocating the Northern Irish “model” has become a popular pastime. In major conflicts, the key players are now urged to consider the undoubted success in Northern Ireland and follow our example. This is hardly surprising, but I am concerned about how that example is described.

A few months ago, Peter Hain, the U.K.’s former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, described it as “the development of dialogue at every level,” a dialogue “delivering the most obdurate constituencies,” focussing on “key leaders.” It also warned that “preconditions can strangle the process at birth.” Many others have urged unconditional dialogue with the most intransigent.

These accounts disturb me. Such initiatives in the wrong circumstances can backfire. In 1972 a high-ranking IRA delegation, including both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, was flown (in secret) to London for talks with the then Northern Ireland secretary. The talks failed. The bar had been set too low — they were invited to engage in dialogue only a few days into a flimsy and temporary ceasefire. The IRA saw it as a sign of British weakness and stepped up its campaign. Loyalists saw it as a waning British commitment to maintaining Northern Ireland’s position within the U.K. and increased their violence. Actions intended to bring peace merely deepened constitutional uncertainty.

Thankfully, the U.K. Government learned the lessons. Crucially it was soon made clear that there were conditions before there could be an official engagement. The key conditions were later formalised in the Downing Street declaration of 1993 as an end to violence and a commitment to exclusively peaceful means. Equally important was the government’s commitment to the consent principle and its refusal to act as a persuader for a united Ireland, which prefigured the outcome of the formal interparty talks, the three-stranded structure of which were defined in March 1991, and the key procedural decisions taken by the parties in 1992 in the absence of Sinn Fein. When it called the cessation of its campaign in 1994, Republicans were, in effect, accepting these parameters for talks.

Nowhere is the Northern Ireland analogy applied more vigorously than in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And as we get closer to a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis those voices urging negotiation at almost any price are getting louder and louder. Commentators point animatedly to the elephant in the room — Hamas — which will almost certainly not be attending the talks. Nothing can be achieved, they argue, if the most extremist elements are not at the negotiating table.

We must hope for agreement from all the parties at Annapolis. But agreement will mean an accommodation, not a victory of one side over another. Still less will it mean the annihilation of the “other.” Where does Hamas stand on these matters? Will it accept a two-state solution? Will it end violence? Hamas’ failure to reply satisfactorily shows that it would be wrong to try to include it. The preconditions for engagement were clear for the IRA in the early 1990s, and they are clear for Hamas today — renounce violence, recognise Israel, and accept previous peace agreements. Hamas must be encouraged to take the same sort of steps the IRA took towards the negotiating table.

If there is one lesson to learn from the Northern Ireland experience, it is that preconditions are crucial in ending violence and producing a settlement. Being overgenerous to extremist groups is like giving sweets to a spoilt child in the hope that it will improve its behaviour — it usually results in worse actions.

(David Trimble was formerly leader of the Ulster Unionist party, first minister of Northern Ireland, and a Nobel peace laureate.)

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