The Price of Rewarding Lunacy

 

The Difference Between Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine is not about historical baggage or culture but rewarding and incentivizing lunatics on all sides.

Around a week ago, I had the privilege of being invited to a Fintech event hosted by the Irish Chamber of Commerce Singapore, Invest Northern Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. The event was all about the possible Fintech investments one could make in Ireland and Northern Ireland (yes, there is a difference).

The entire event had a surreal affect on me. Everyone sounded optimistic. The Minister for the Department of the Economy, Northern Ireland, Mr. Conor Murphy, even said that “Northern Ireland is the world’s Number One destination for FinTech investment.” Everyone was talk about what a great place Northern Ireland is.

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7434364448061525265?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7274292816955999746

 

 This wasn’t the image of Northern Ireland that I had. I grew up in the UK in the 1990s. Some of my best friends were sons of British Military Officers and for them, the threat of “Daddy being a target” was very real. The guys in the Combined Cadet Forces (CCF) could not wear uniforms outside school grounds because there was a real risk of being a victim of terrorism. That was just in the UK itself. In Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, there was a joke that went like this; “Why did the chicken cross the road? – Because it was stupid.” It was this simple. If you lived on the Catholic side of the street, you never crossed over to the Protestant side and visa versa. Crossing the street was a death sentence.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Ulster Defense Force (UDF) saw to it that this was the image of Northern Ireland. Then, when I went back to the UK for University, the parties involved in Northern Ireland signed the Good Friday Agreement. The process of ending centuries of sectarian hatred began and now, as a middle-aged man, I’m attending events that talk about Northern Ireland that are optimistic and cheerful.

I’m also old enough to remember another conflict that seemed to have an optimistic end to it but has somehow turned into an utter “s***show,” that is the perpetual Israel-Palestine conflict. In my last year of school, Yaser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. Months later, Mr. Rabin would visit Washington to sign another peace deal with King Hussain of Jordan. It looked like one of the world’s longest conflicts would finally come to an end.

Then, disaster struck. Mr. Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist and Mr. Netanyahu, who had built a career opposing the Oslo accords came into power. Everything started to go down the proverbial toilet. It looked like there would be a reprieve when Mr. Netanyahu was briefly voted out and replaced with Mr. Barak. Whatever optimism the world might have expected was short lived when Mr. Sharon decided to provoke an uprising and replaced Mr. Barak.

So, how is it that Northern Ireland went from “s***hole” into a booming place whereas the Israel-Palestine conflict has only gotten worse? Some might argue that it’s a question of culture. The less informed would be prone to saying that the Irish are European and therefore rational opposed to the Middle Easterners who are less so. I’ve heard the constant argument in Westernised circles that it has to do with the Islamic faith which encourages violence.

As easy as it is to find comfort in such arguments. However, as comforting as these arguments may sound, they are simply not true.

Let’s start with the fact that the “real estate” game in both conflicts were different. In Northern Ireland it’s always been a question of whether they’re part of Ireland or the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the dispute in Israel-Palestine is about ownership of a particular plot of land.

If you look at the following map of Northern Ireland in relation to the rest of Ireland, you’ll notice that it’s always been the same, even if the people have had centuries of fighting each other:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Ireland#/media/File:Map_of_Ireland's_capitals.png

 

So, in a sense this was relatively easy to solve. I remember a school debate where the solution was considered condoms or a lack of them. The argument being Northern Ireland would remain British as long as the Protestants where in the majority but would eventually go to Ireland as the Catholics reproduced in greater numbers. To get round the impasse, the solution was to give Northern Ireland a lot of autonomy with the government in London handling the bigger issues. It also helps that the government in Dublin is not rushing to absorb Northern Ireland and to provoke the UK in the way Pakistan does with India over Jamu and Kashmir.

Israel-vs-Palestine is a different story. It’s a dispute over who gets to live on a single piece of land. Oslo got off to a start because one side was willing to give up some land in return for peace. However, every conflict that has erupted since then comes from the fact that the side with more land has consistently encroached on the little land given over to the other side with impunity, giving them less and less.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/srael-Palestine-Map-over-time-32-The-Nakba-The-Catastrophe-The-Nakba-which-means_fig1_384801875  

 

 Its now such that the side with less land inevitably believes that its never going to get a reasonable deal at negotiating anything and inevitably resorts to violence because it believes it has nothing to lose.

Then, there’s the issue of the outside powers, specifically the USA. In the case of Northern Ireland, the Americans played the role of an “honest” broker. Former Senator George Mitchel worked tirelessly to get both sides to the negotiating table and although he got flack for it, Bill Clinton’s description of “helping two drunk men” get home wasn’t far off the mark.

Although the Brits got upset with the Americans allowing Gerry Adams, the then leader of Sinn Fein, into America, it turned out to be a good move. Sinn Fein had the confidence that America would not allow the British to screw them. The British had the confidence that once the American government stepped in, the IRA’s ability to get gun money from the USA would be curtailed.

It helped that the Blair Government at the time had a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the late Mo Mowlam, who was willing to push the Ulster Unionist to the negotiating table and Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach of the day made it clear he had no dreams of unifying Ireland according to the fantasies of Sinn Fein’s fringe element.

With the exception of the lunatics on both sides, everyone had an interest in making the deal in Northern Ireland work. Men like the late David Trimble were celebrated for making peace. So, the concept of Northern Ireland is very different from the one of my middle age.

This has clearly not been the case of Israel vs Palestine. The West, especially the USA, has been far from an honest broker. Sure, some European nations like Ireland, Spain, Norway, Italy and now France are now halting arms shipments to Israel, but the major powers like the USA, UK and Germany are not. You can stand in the middle of any Western capital and shout all sorts of insults about that nation and it would be called “freedom of speech.” The moment you whisper that Mr. Netanyahu is not a saint, you will feel the entire weight of the state upon you.

Its as if the lunatics will win by design whereas in the case of Northern Ireland, it was rational people who were designed to win. Look at it this way, taxes in Palestinian territories run by the Palestinian Authority (PA) are collected by Israel. So, whenever something happens in Israel, the Israelis will inevitably withhold money from the PA unless it cracks down on certain groups. However, the PA has no money to pay its forces to crack down on said groups, who don’t play within the rules and therefore have more resources than the PA.

In such a system, the lunatics have every incentive to be lunatics. If you’re in Israeli and you see an extremist government getting rewarded by the West and the moderates getting shoved aside, it goes without saying, you every incentive to be a lunatic. If you are a Palestinian and you see the cooler heads getting shot or ignored but the lunatics hitting at the people you see hurting you, it goes without saying that you support the lunatics.

The system has to be redesigned where rational people are incentivised and the lunatics marginalised and not the other way round.