Let the record of history show that on the 22nd of May, in the year 2024, it was Hamas that finally achieved what no other Palestinian organisation has managed in 70 years: Ireland has finally recognised the existence of a Palestinian state.
It should not be controversial to credit Ireland’s policy shift on this issue to Hamas: Pro-Palestinian voices in Ireland have been calling for the recognition of Palestine now for decades, and to no avail. In 2014, the Oireachtas passed a motion calling on the Government of the day to enact recognition, but the Government of the day demurred. For seven long decades, Ireland has refused to do the thing it did today: It only took the outbreak of war on October 7th, and the kidnapping and murder of thousands of Israelis, to get Ireland, Spain, and Norway to act.
While the Irish Government might delude itself, and indeed delude a willing mass of the Irish people to believe that today’s announcement promotes peace, thinking people should be in no doubt as to the reality. Across the West Bank, where Hamas is in a death struggle for supremacy with the moderate PLO, the word will go out: We accomplished what the moderates never could, and all it took was martyrdom. If you wished to hand Hamas a propaganda victory for use at home, you could not dream of a more powerful one than this. Our war is working.
Of course, that is not why Ireland recognised a Palestinian state. Indeed, Ireland is not even sure what or who it has just recognised: Notably absent from recognition this morning was any clear statement of the borders of such a state, its capital, or who, indeed governs it. Ask these questions of any other state recognised by Ireland, and Dublin will have an answer: Palikir is the capital city of Micronesia; Tonga is ruled by His Majesty King Tupou the Sixth; The internationally recognised border between the United States and Canada runs just north of the 45th parallel.
In Palestine, by contrast, there are at least two competing Governments, and no agreed head of state, or capital city. There have been no elections since 2004 (largely, though unofficially, because Hamas would win them) and no single entity can exert control over the whole of Palestinian-controlled territory. Functionally, Gaza and the West Bank are run as two separate countries, by two separate Governments. The PLO, which Ireland will presumably treat as the official Government, has no legitimate authority, or even practical authority, in Gaza.
Again, it must be said: If any of this mattered to the Irish Government, it would not have recognised a Palestinian state for the simple reason that no such thing exists. Therefore, we must conclude that none of this mattered to the Irish Government. So, what did?
I am reminded of Ireland’s reaction to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Then, too, a grandiose and significant announcement was made: Ireland, unilaterally, pledged to accommodate up to 200,000 fleeing Ukrainians. Irish politicians have, in recent decades, acquired an enormous taste for standing, like the Colossus of Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput, astride the world stage. I am reminded here of the former White House senior staffer who lamented that Northern Irish politicians, in his view, kept inventing stupid rows with each other to have an excuse to visit the White House for talks.
For a few hours, and perhaps if they are very lucky, Ireland’s three leading politicians will get to stand astride the world stage today, posing as international statesmen of heft and wisdom. They have managed to insert themselves into one of the world’s longest-running and most intractable conflicts. If they are lucky, their statements will draw reaction from the White House and the Kremlin and perhaps even Beijing. CNN will report on Simon Harris’s statement, and Mr. Martin may well be invited to deliver his views in the solemn manner of a headmaster to ABC or NBC. Left wing academics in the United States and Europe will call the decision brave and timely, and in their retirement, one or two of our politicians may be invited to speak at Universities on the subject.
It is, I think, no coincidence that the boldest steps taken by the Irish Government are always on matters of international affairs: Our most radical domestic policy is on Climate Change, where Ireland can – we are told – “lead the world”. Our approach to immigration is studiously contrasted against “the rise of the far right” elsewhere, and in the Government’s telling we are “fulfilling our international obligations”. Our greatest foreign policy priority just so happens to be Palestine, and by recognising it we are, once again, “leading the world”.
This obsession with “leading the world” is, by now, almost pathological. And it is always used to justify not benefits for the Irish people, but hardships. On Climate Change, we must suffer relative poverty and expense for the benefit of setting an example to feckless powers. On immigration, we must demonstrate our international compassion by growing tent cities in the capital. On Palestine, we must damage our diplomatic relations with the United States and others for the sake of fawning headlines in the kinds of newspaper that Trinity Academics have subscriptions to.
There is, of course, no material benefit from any of this to the people of Gaza or the West Bank. The war is continuing this afternoon, as it was continuing yesterday. There is not one scared or hungry child who is less scared or less hungry because of a press conference in Dublin. There are precisely two groups of people who are “winners” today, both for propaganda reason: Hamas; and our own politicians who can once again delude themselves, and us, into believing that we are leading the world.
Perhaps now that their itch for international prominence has been sated for a while, they might do something about crime. Or homelessness. Or migration. Or the state of Limerick Hospital. Or the kids in Ireland living with the agony of scoliosis and without even the comfort of hope.
Don’t hold your breath.