Hibernia on the Sinai

       Traveling through Ireland, you can often be forgiven for questioning which country you are in. The green, white, red, and black of the Palestinian flag can be seen flying from houses, bus stops, traffic poles, and public parks. In some ways, this is unremarkable, in that they are flown in London or Berlin, but what adds significance to this is the often accompanied phrase “Two Nations, One Struggle”. It is clear that to many who fly these flags, Ireland’s tortured history is reflected in the cause for a Palestinian state.

On the surface, there are striking parallels between these two histories. Both view themselves as underdogs resisting imperial domination. Before 1169, the Irish had an independent, decentralised island that the English claimed and settled, with periodic wars and forced transfers of population and land. Eventually, Ireland was partitioned along religious lines, and Belfast remains divided by forty-five foot “Peace Walls” that separate the population. Palestinians often point to a similar, more recent, history of partition, violence, population transfers and contested statehood. The Irish have made much of these similarities, becoming the first EU country to call for a Palestinian state in 1980, and announced its recognition of that state last year amidst accusations of genocide. In response, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin.

While many in Ireland clearly have strong and sincere feelings about the situation in Gaza, this attempt to forge “One Struggle” oversimplifies and distorts both histories. Whereas Jewish Israelis invoke ancient, biblical claims to the land, British settlers relied on commercial and civilisational justifications. The English, for their part, when they thought about Ireland at all, usually saw the Irish as a diminutive member of a greater British family; when negotiating for independence, Prime Minister Lloyd George found his own Welsh ethnicity reconcilable to his British identity, and argued that all Celtic peoples were welcome in Britain. While the Irish negotiators did not agree, this is clearly a far cry from the way the Israelis view the Palestinians, which lacks any claim of shared identity or inclusion. These histories have some superficial similarities, but do not provide the Palestinians with an Irish model for liberation. 

As everything else in Ireland, these tensions run higher in the North. On the International Wall on Divis Street, alongside depictions of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, there are depictions of IRA leaders standing in solidarity with Palestinian children. On the other side of the gate that separates the nationalist Falls Road from the loyalist Shankill Road, murals feature support for Israel and the IDF alongside commemorations of the Battle of the Somme. 

So why is so much invested in this idea of a shared struggle? After all, you won’t see many flags for Tibet, East Turkestan, Cyprus, Armenia or any other occupied peoples. In a 2022 op-ed titled “Why does Ireland hate Israel?”, the former Israeli ambassador blamed a mix of “traditional [Catholic] Church antisemitism”, but also recognised some of these historical distortions. While one can admire the solidarity nations show to the embattled, it is dangerous to do so based on the prism of one’s own history. Ultimately, it holds the Irish back from seeing the Palestinians as anything other than an extension of themselves.