Ulster Democratic Party

How Israel failed to learn from the Northern Ireland peace process

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
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The Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided a clear guide.

Key Points: 
  • The Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided a clear guide.
  • They have to do what the negotiating teams, of which I was a part, did in Northern Ireland.
  • The problem is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ally, the United States of America, who have failed to apply the lessons of Northern Ireland to Middle East peacemaking.

How ‘peace polls’ work

  • The objective was to determine the precise points of common ground, where they existed, or effective compromise where it was needed for peacemaking.
  • So I always made a point of hand delivering the reports to Mitchell and the parties the day before they were published.
  • Through public opinion polls the people gained a seat at the negotiating table, and through a referendum the deal was made.

When it all went wrong

  • I had been in touch with Mitchell and met him in his office at the State Department.
  • At that time I had also been running peace polls in Sri Lanka with support from the Norwegians.
  • So I did not get the funding and Mitchell eventually resigned his post without achieving peace in May 2011.
  • But I had made all necessary preparations and contacts with all the parties to the conflict to make it work.
  • My pollster Mina Zemach was a good friend of Peres and had been his pollster when he led the Labour party.
  • Like Sinn Féin they had a legitimate grievance and said they would be happy to cooperate with the peace polls.

Misplaced optimism

  • In my optimism at the time, I thought perhaps that Clinton – if she became president – would send her husband to the Middle East as her special envoy.
  • Bill Clinton had got very close to making an agreement some years earlier with the “Clinton parameters”, but he ran out of time.
  • And then Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump – and so we are where we are.
  • It is just as likely that my optimism was misplaced and that Clinton and possibly Joe Biden – who has always been a very strong supporter of Israel – did not want to oppose Netanyahu for domestic political reasons.


Colin John Irwin receives funding from: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in South East Europe, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, OneVoice, Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now FCDO), Economic and Social Research Council (UK ESRC), United Nations, InterPeace, Health and Welfare Canada, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), British Academy, Norwegian Peoples Aid, The Day After, No Peace Without Justice, US Department of State, Local Administrations Council Unit (Syria), Asia Foundation, Department for International Development (UK DFID), OpenAI, Atlantic Philanthropies, Universities: Dalhousie, Manitoba, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, Queens Belfast, Liverpool. Also member of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) which promotes freedom to publish public opinion polls and sets international professional standards.