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It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the political mess in which the Irish Government has landed itself on the vexxed question of the occupied territories bill.
In recent weeks, and with an apparent eye on the upcoming general election, the Government announced with some fanfare that it would reconsider the bill and perhaps be open to passing it before the dissolution of the Dáil. Pairing such a bill – effectively very minor economic sanctions on Israel – with the Government’s recognition of a Palestinian state earlier in the year, the thinking clearly was that FF and FG TDs would be able to go canvassing in Palestinian keffiyah scarves if that’s what the voters or their own egos demanded. The country would have taken strong and decisive action to chastise the Government in Jerusalem, and Simon Harris could give a stern and triumphal press conference about Ireland’s moral leadership on the global stage.
It is now apparent that no such bill will be passed before the General Election. It is further apparent that – per a story in the Ditch yesterday – the American Embassy has been lobbying against it. There is no particularly compelling evidence that US lobbying has been decisive, but the image isn’t great. Simon Harris and Micheál Martin, Global Statesmen, instead becomes Simon Harris and Micheál Martin, doing what they’re told by Washington.
Which, of course, they should. Their job, last this writer checked, is to prioritise Irish interests on the global stage. Imperiling relations with what remains the greatest power on earth in return for a symbolic dig at the Israelis is hardly a calculation you’d make if you were putting Irish interests first. What’s more, whatever hope the Irish Government had of appeasing the hibernophile Biden over Gaza, Trump will always prefer Benjamin Netanyahu to Simon Harris.
But of course, a great many voters on the left (and some on the right) will see it that way: If you’re the kind of person prone to thinking that perhaps the Government answers to foreign masters, this is exactly the kind of story that gets you up in arms.
The funny thing is that this is a rod the Government has made entirely on its own, and for its own back.
Going into this election, Martin and Harris had a consistent story to tell about the conflict in the middle east. Ireland had recognised Palestine, to Israeli annoyance. We had refused to take our brave troops out of Lebanon, instead confining them to barracks. We had led the charge in the EU against Ursula von der Leyen’s sympathy for the Zionists. Alongside the far-left Spanish Government in Madrid, Ireland had spent a summer fruitlessly urging collective action against Jerusalem. Global moral leadership.
On the occupied territories bill, Government had a simple and easy line to take: Trade is an EU competence. It was their choice, and theirs alone, to undermine their own defences by arguing that actually, maybe, we can do this after all. And thus somehow the most pro-palestinian Government in Europe has left itself open to charges of Zionist stoogery. As I say, you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about all of this is that our politicians consider the occupied territories bill a good use of their time to begin with: In all of the opinion polling on issues that matter to the public that has been conducted this year, the situation in Gaza has never polled higher than 5% of the public considering it their top issue. Further, it stands to reason that the 5% in question disproportionately comprises the leftmost voters in the country, since the parties that most closely match that stance are People before Profit and Sinn Fein. It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense – politically – for the Government to be spending time on it. So why?
The simplest and most likely explanations, I think, are twofold: First that this is simply that rarest of things in Irish politics – a matter of genuine conviction. Perhaps Mssrs Martin and Harris genuinely are horrified beyond words at the middle east and want to do something, consequences be damned. Given their relative lack of obvious convictions on other matters, this may be a reach.
The second – and to my mind more likely – is ego. That the two lads, for want of a better term, are addicted to marching across the world stage like the long-lost colossus of Rhodes and would like Ireland to be a player. We all know how Irish politicians manage to schedule their entire careers, for example, around the White House shamrock ceremony. It is no coincidence that the three most recent Taoisigh to leave office – Mssrs Varadkar, Martin, and Kenny – all did so within weeks of their final “last hurrah” trip to the White House.
In any case, the net effect of it is that rather than having the “high moral ground” from the pro-palestinian perspective, the Government is going into the election having needlessly handed the keffiyah-wearing left a grievance. It’s very bad politics, and stupidly so. Jerusalem, if it bothers to look, will be amused.
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