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CNN — (CNN) — Ireland has become the latest country to say it will intervene in a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, reflecting the country’s longstanding stand of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Ireland announced this week that it would apply for intervention, increasing international pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to scale back its devastating assault on Gaza and end harsh food aid restrictions that are pushing Palestinians to starvation.
Irish Foreign Secretary Michael Martin said in a speech on Wednesday that the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza both “represent clear violations of international law on a massive scale.” .
The case was brought before the ICJ by South Africa, and in its first judgment in January, the court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, but He did not go so far as to bring charges against him.
According to reports, Ireland is expected to include in its intervention the argument that blocking Israeli food aid to Gaza could be considered an act of genocide.
“Sharing the colonial experience”
Ireland’s stance on the conflict between Israel and Hamas is unusual among European governments. Zoe Lawlor, head of the Irish-Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), said: “There was deep empathy and sympathy for the Palestinian people in Ireland.”
That unity arose primarily from the common experience of conquest by an occupying power. For more than 800 years, the island nation was under English and then British rule, ever since Anglo-Norman invaders seized vast tracts of land from the indigenous Irish people in the 12th century.
“Ireland was Britain’s oldest colony,” said Jane Ohlmeyer, a history professor at Trinity College Dublin, noting that unlike other Western European countries, many of them were imperial powers.
“But like Palestine,[Ireland]also has direct and continuing experience of imperialism,” she said. The “shared colonial experience” of Irish and Palestinians “has undoubtedly shaped how Irish people engage in postcolonial conflicts.”
Ireland was often subject to violent and discriminatory rule from London during its time under British rule, the most notorious being the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s, during which there were repeated potato crop failures and approximately 100 It is estimated that 10,000 people died of starvation. More than a million more people were forced to emigrate because the British government failed to adequately support starving people.
Leo Varadkar, who recently resigned as Ireland’s prime minister, addressed this at a St. Patrick’s Day commemoration at the White House this month, pointing out the similarities between the Irish and Palestinian experiences.
“Leaders often ask why Irish people feel so much sympathy for Palestinians. The answer is simple: we see our history through their eyes. ‘ said Mr Varadkar. “A story of forced migration, deprivation, questioning and denial of national identity, forced migration, discrimination, and now hunger.”
Jiran Wahba Abdalmadjid, Palestine’s ambassador to Ireland, said Ireland’s support stems from a history of common experience.
“This historical background that the Irish people themselves have endured… they know exactly what it means to be occupied, colonized, oppressed and deprived,” she told CNN. The Irish “know how the Palestinians feel when we reach this level of starvation.”
NGOs and international human rights officials have warned that Israel’s restrictions on food aid could lead to famine in Gaza. UN human rights chief Volker Turk said this month that the act could be tantamount to using hunger as a weapon of war.
Ireland was partitioned by Britain in 1921 after many attempts to restore sovereignty both violently and peacefully failed. Part of Ulster in the north of the island remained in the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The remaining territory left the Union a year later and became known as the Irish Free State and later the Republic of Ireland.
Ohlmeyer argues that Ireland “provided the template for partition” in historic Palestine in 1948.
Both divisions were created primarily along religious lines. Since its founding in 1921, Ulster has been famously referred to as ‘a Protestant nation for a Protestant nation’. In 1917, the British government declared that a “homeland for the Jews” should be established within historic Palestine. The United Nations proposed a plan to divide the land between Arabs and Jews in 1947, but the Palestinians rejected it.
The first British governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, described the plan to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine as “a small loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism” .
Decades later, author and historian Sean Gannon told CNN that it was only after 1967 that the rest of historic Palestine “consolidated Irish political and popular opinion behind the Palestinian cause.” He said that it was occupied by Israel.
During and after three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, known as the Unrest, residents viewed the Palestinian struggle for liberation through the prism of their own conflict. Republican Irish nationalists campaigning for separation from Britain were generally sympathetic to the Palestinians. British supporters and unionists in Northern Ireland generally sided with Israel.
In 1980, the Republic of Ireland became the first European Union member state to declare the need for an independent Palestinian state, and has been promoting a two-state solution ever since. The Irish government has identified Middle East peace as a “key foreign policy priority” and has accused Israel of making peace “increasingly difficult to achieve.”
Palestinians in Ireland are an ‘internal problem’
Ireland had consistently criticized Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza even before the October 7 Hamas attack, and since then politicians and the public have largely viewed Israel’s response as coercive. have expressed concerns.
The country’s new prime minister, Simon Harris, is unlikely to take a more flexible stance. Ireland’s youngest ever leader highlighted the impact of war on children in a speech to parliament in November, saying: “Peace cannot be built on the mass graves of children.”
Israel did not hesitate to strike back against Ireland. Cultural Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said in November that Palestinians in Gaza “could go to Ireland or the desert,” among other inflammatory comments Netanyahu has sought to distance himself from. In February, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Ehrlich, said in an interview on News Talk radio station that she had only heard “one-sided views that paint Israel as the sole villain.”
When Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand was released by Hamas after being held hostage for 50 days, Varadkar later posted on X that she was “missing”, causing an uproar in Israel. Ta.
The Irish ambassador was summoned to Israel’s Foreign Office, where Foreign Minister Eli Cohen accused Mr Varadkar of losing his “moral compass” and saying he needed a “reality check”.
Ireland’s opposition parties, particularly Sinn Féin, which supports Irish unity and is active on both sides of the border, have taken an even stronger stance than the government. Its leader, Mary Lou MacDonald, said “Gaza cannot become a graveyard of international law,” and at times called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.
Matt Carthy, Sinn Féin’s foreign affairs and defense spokesperson, told CNN: “Ireland is one of the few countries where Palestine and the conflict is a national political issue.” “There’s a lot of pressure on the Irish government, first of all, to make a very strong statement.”
galvanized population
Nationwide demonstrations in cities and towns across Ireland have been a demonstration of public support for the Palestinian people since the start of the Gaza war.
“Sometimes you can see the Palestinian flag on any street in any city,” Ambassador Abdalmadjid said. “This tells Palestinians that you are not alone in this world. There are others in this world who know how you are suffering.”
Ms Lawlor, from the Ireland-Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, has been participating in demonstrations in her hometown of Limerick and the capital, Dublin, for the past 25 weeks.
“What we’re seeing in Gaza has really mobilized people like I’ve never seen before,” she said. “We are also a people who have had starvation imposed on them by the colonizing powers. So I think that’s something that resonates with people here.”
An Amnesty International poll in January found that 71% of Irish people believed that Palestinians live under an apartheid regime, while an Irish Times poll in February found that 62% believed that Israelis were living under an apartheid regime. It has been shown that they believe the attack on Gaza is not justified.
For activists like Mr Lawlor and opposition party Sinn Fein, the Irish government’s intervention in the ICJ has been long overdue.
“Our experience of the peace process, and the importance of international solidarity and intervention, has made us keenly aware that this is not something that can be done by just sitting and watching a TV screen,” Carthy said. he said.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for a country like Ireland to have diplomatic relations with the State of Israel in the same way as any other state that has committed no serious violations of international law,” he added. “And I think a meaningful step the Irish government could take would be to expel the Israeli ambassador until the onslaught on Gaza is over.”
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