Ten years ago, Northern Ireland (NI) and Israel/Palestine, with their nascent peace processes, were held up together as shining examples of ethnic conflicts which were about to be resolved for good. This was the post Cold War "New World Order" in action, peace and prosperity for all, even those whose antipathy stretched back generations.
A decade on, it's not hard to see which pecae process has largely succeeded and which has failed abjectly. The situation in NI today is calm, in spite of serious difficulties in restoring the power-sharing executive. Huge progress has been made since 1994 to channel political energy into exclusively non-violent avenues. Above all else, the relative lack of violence over the past ten years has saved hundreds of lives.
In Palestine meanwhile the two sides seem further away than ever from reaching an agreement which would settle the conflict for good. More importantly, the situation on the streets is terrible with daily killings. The last four years have been the most violent since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967. Eleven years since the peace process began there is more, much more violence, rather than less.
There is no single reason for this huge difference in outcomes between NI and Israel/Palestine. Both conflicts are so complex as to defy simple explanations. The two conflicts are in many ways alike but in other ways very different. I believe that an important difference, and an important reason for the success of one peace process and the failure of the other, is the issue of fear. In Palestine both sides fear that the other wants to eradicate them. In NI this is not the case.
No doubt there are some on both sides in NI who dream of eradicating the other community. But it's exactly that, a dream, not a real possibility. For decades efforts to resolve the conflict in NI have taken the survival of both communities as a given. Protestants and Catholics will continue to live in NI. The issue is what will NI be: British, Irish or a bit of both.
In Palestine by contrast, the two sides each harbour the suspicion that the other wants to drive them out of the Holy Land. Palestinians fear that Israel will one day "finish the job" it started in 1948 by driving them across the Jordan River. Israelis fear that the Palestinians in particular, and the Arabs in general, would like to "drive the Jews into the sea".
I think that the Palestinian fears of complete removal from their homeland is more than justified by decades of Israeli occupation policy. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem the Israelis have engaged in what I call "slow-motion ethnic cleansing". It's not mass killing, Yugoslavia style, it's something far more insiduous. Through settlement building, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the uprooting of olive trees and retrictive planning legislation, Israel tries to make life so difficult for Palestinians that they will have to emigrate.
Many do, but thanks to the high birth-rate, the total number of Palestinians living in the occupied territories keeps going up. Israelis see this, that while they keep gaining land, they aren't shedding Palestinians. So an alarmingly high number of Israelis support a more direct approach, the policy of "transfer", or to put it more honestly "ethnic cleansing". Realistically, the US will not permit such a policy in the current climate. But in the context of a major war in the Middle East, anything is possible.
For Israelis, they need only listen to the daily pronouncements of Fatah and Hamas to have their worst fears about their opponents' intentions confirmed. These groups often speak of taking not just the West Bank and Gaza, but of recovering the whole of Mandate Palestine.
In part this is just rhetoric. The mainstream of Palestinian nationalism long ago resigned itself to the two-state solution, or to put it another way, accepted that 22% of its country was all it was going to get. But even if Israelis accept this compromise as genuine (and very few do) that still leaves the issue of the refugees. Israelis fear that to concede the right of return to the 1948 refugees in a final status deal would be to sign the death warrant of the Jewish state.
But none of this really matters. It doesn't matter whether I think that the fear of annihilation is justified or not. It matters what the Palestinians and the Israelis think. In any conflict perception is the crucial factor. If Israelis or Palestinians percieve that they are under threat of being eradicated, they will react accordingly. The concept of "reality", dubious at the best of times, is immaterial here.
When confronted by an enemy whom you believe has genocidal intentions, there are only two options, buy a plane ticket or buy a gun. So Israel responds to each Palestinian attack with an attack of its own. By always retaliating, the Israelis want to send the message that they can't be cowed, that this time "the Crusaders" will not be chased off. From the Israeli point of view, one day the Palestinians will learn that their opponents are immovable, or else the Palestinians themselves will have to be moved.
The Palestinians also use violence to teach a lesson: that occupation has a price, and that price is paid in blood. They too want to show their implacable determination to remain on their land regardless of Israeli pressure. They want to show that they will eventually triumph because Israel will one day tire of the casualties. Their inspiration is the example of Hizbollah who inflicted enough casualties on the Israelis in southern Lebanon to persuade them to leave.
And so, very depressingly, I arrive at the conclusion that as long as both sides percieve their existence to be under threat, the only logical course of action is force. Unfortunately, it makes sense to demonstrate through violence, your implacable determination to remain.