In a surprising twist, the most bizarre intervention in yesterday’s Dáil debate over how Ireland should best punish Israel for the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza did not come, as one might have expected, from the benches occupied by People before Profit. It came, instead, from the Taoiseach himself, who had what might be termed a unique solution:
A more “active approach” from the European Union is needed when the current phase of the Israel-Hamas conflict is over, setting out that aid to Palestine and trade arrangements with Israel will only continue based on a series of conditions, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
Mr Varadkar said for “far too long”, European countries and the EU have been willing to “aid the Palestinians and trade with the Israelis without pressing either side to do what they need to do”.
“When this phase of the conflict is over, we need a more active approach from the European Union, pushing for a two-state solution, saying to the Palestinians that we’re not going to continue to give you aid if you don’t respect democracy and human rights and crack down on terrorism,” Mr Varadkar said.
“And say to the Israelis, that we’re not willing to continue to trade with you in the way that we do if you’re not willing to be serious about a two-state solution and allowing the Palestinians have the right to have the State that they need and they deserve.”
When you strip everything else away from that, what the Taoiseach was essentially calling for was a programme of economic sanctions on Israel unless and until that country is “serious” about a two-state solution. It’s the kind of soundbite that will, no doubt, placate a section of the population, and be well received by the kinds of people who write foreign policy articles for the Irish Times. The problem is, it’s nonsense.
The first indication that it is nonsense comes from the word “serious”. How, exactly, does Israel go about proving that it is “serious” about a two-state solution? Would, for example, a statement from the Israeli Government saying “we are serious about a two-state solution” satisfy that requirement? If not, then the obvious question is what concrete steps Israel could take to bring about a Palestinian state by itself.
In any case, it’s entirely moot, since the Taoiseach would be laughed out of Brussels at the very suggestion of such a policy – and laughed out for good reason. Would he care to extend the principle, they’ll ask him? Would Ireland, for example, care to suspend all agricultural exports to China and the Middle East until full human rights for women and minorities are guaranteed in those countries? Will Ireland push to make all EU trade conditional on human rights advances? In which case, the Germans will ask him, where shall the EU source all of its oil and natural gas resources?
Ireland is, people may (or may not) have noticed, already in a considerable minority within the EU over its stance on the conflict in the middle east, which earned us a not-especially-subtle lecture about anti-semitism from the German Embassy last week:
"Anticolonialism must not lead to antisemitism" – an important and timely reminder from Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, both for Germany and Ireland. https://t.co/3IwEfINGzr
— German Embassy Dublin (@GERMANYinIRL) November 3, 2023
The idea that the Taoiseach is going to walk into Brussels and somehow manage to make EU trade with Israel conditional on unspecified seriousness about a two-state solution is so laughable as to belong in a secondary school debating competition, rather than the national parliament of a serious country. It is a suggestion so removed from reality as to make one wonder whether we are governed by serious people, or fools.
There is a widespread fantasy, I fear, even amongst people who recognise the unseriousness of Irish debate on issues like this, that that unseriousness is cost-free. That is an increasingly dubious position.
The Irish Government has foreign policy priorities that are separate to the middle east. The European Union, for example, is actively considering becoming a more militarised body and more aggressively harmonising its foreign policy. Ireland’s position has long been to resist such moves on the grounds of our supposed military neutrality. Yet here is our Taoiseach, in essence, demanding that the EU adopt a radical and unprecedented foreign policy approach regarding trade with the one Jewish country in the world. You can protest all you wish that my characterisation is unfair – but it will be widely noted. There are no other countries in Europe, after all, that the German Embassy felt obliged to gently chide last week, while mentioning antisemitism.
Ireland is the only country in Europe where there is a debate about the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador. We did not expel the Russian Ambassador over Ukraine, or even the British Ambassador over bloody Sunday. We did not expel the Saudi Ambassador over Yemen, or the US Ambassador over Iraq. Again, the pattern is obvious enough for anybody to see.
If, as a country, we are stupid enough to think that nobody else in the world is noticing the black comedy playing out in our national parliament, then we deserve the consequences that may – or may not – come as a result.
This is not conduct befitting a serious country on the world stage. Our politicians are behaving as if they are still passing motions in the students union council in UCD. We’d best hope that the Germans are the only ones to have noticed, so far.