Talking to terrorists, non violence, and counter terrorism

TALKING TO
TERRORISTS,
NON-VIOLENCE, AND
COUNTER-TERRORISM
Lessons for Gaza from
Northern Ireland

Andrew Fitz-Gibbon


Talking to Terrorists, Non-Violence,
and Counter-Terrorism



Andrew Fitz-Gibbon

Talking to Terrorists,
Non-Violence, and
Counter-Terrorism
Lessons for Gaza from Northern Ireland


Andrew Fitz-Gibbon
State University of New York
Cortland NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-33836-1
ISBN 978-3-319-33837-8
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33837-8

(eBook)

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To Ben



PREFACE

Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which lasted for 51 days in summer
2014, was the third Israeli military operation in Gaza in six years. The

human impact was extensive: 2132 Palestinians killed, 70 % of whom
were civilians, including at least 501 children. Over 11,100 Palestinians
were injured. Seventy-one Israelis were killed, five of whom were civilians, including one child. Sixty-nine Israelis were injured. Damage to the
infrastructure of Gaza was massive: 12,400 housing units were destroyed
with reconstruction costs estimated at $1.82bn. In April 2015, 17,500
families were still homeless. Fourteen health facilities, eight schools, and
three universities and colleges were destroyed. Thirty percent of agricultural land was damaged.3
*
On September 12, 2014, Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside died.
He had been active in politics in Northern Ireland for over 40 years.
Paisley, known for most of his career as the Reverend Ian Paisley, firebrand
preacher, hater of Roman Catholics and homosexuals, was a controversial
figure—“politically insatiable and highly divisive.”4 He spearheaded the
Protestant retrenchment against a United Irish Republic, and was for a
time the leader of a large body of Protestant paramilitaries. He famously
shouted, “Never, never, never, never!” outside Belfast City Hall as he
addressed tens of thousands of Protestant loyalists about the November
1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. To Pope John Paul II, on his visit to the
European Parliament in October 1988, Paisley said, “I denounce you,
Anti-Christ! I refuse you as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist with all your
false doctrine.” About his enemies the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
vii


viii

PREFACE

Paisley said, “If an IRA man comes to a Protestant home and my men are
there, they will kill that IRA man, yes sir.”

Yet after his death, Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister, and former Deputy Leader of the Irish Republican Party Sinn Féin, Martin
McGuinness, paid tribute to Paisley saying that he had “lost a friend.” After
the Good Friday agreement of 1998, Paisley had taken his Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) into a power-sharing devolved government with
Sinn Féin. Paisley was selected as First Minister with McGuinness sitting
at his right hand as Deputy First Minister of the new Northern Ireland
Assembly, Stormont. In his inaugural speech at Stormont, Paisley said, “I
believe that Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when
hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful
healing in our province.”5Like British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
who vowed never to talk to terrorists, both sides in the conflict, for
decades, refused to talk to each other. However, in time, Protestants and
Catholics of Northern Ireland sat at table together, became colleagues in
power-sharing, and, later, friends who mourn the loss of each other.
*
In this brief account I look at the process of “talking to terrorists” in the
Northern Ireland context, and suggest that just such a process will need to
take place between Israel and the Palestinians for there to be any genuine
peace in the Middle East. As I will suggest, the Northern Ireland Peace
Process was extraordinarily difficult and required much good faith and
compromise on all sides. It has not been a perfect peace, and sectarian factions still rumble. Nonetheless, compared to the violence and loss of life
of the 1970s and 1980s, it remains appropriate to say that peace has come
to Northern Ireland.
The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has been, and
will be, different to that in Northern Ireland. However, the two situations
have so many factors in common that the comparison is at least worth
considering.
I recognize, too, the complexities of the Palestinian situation and do
not pretend to answer them all in this short account. However, I do think
that the lessons learned in the Northern Irish Troubles are pertinent,

might lead to additional research, and perhaps help toward a just and
peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian situation.
I limit my consideration to Gaza, as this was the conversation I had
with my son in summer and fall 2014. I am mindful that Gaza is only one


PREFACE

ix

issue among many in Palestine. I have left untouched the complexities
of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, of the difficult relationship
between the Palestinians, other Arab nations and Iran, and the internally
exiled Palestinian Israelis.6 I am aware that any solution for Gaza must
ultimately be a viable solution for all Palestinian people. Nonetheless, it
was the violence of summer 2014 that gave the initial impetus to write,
and so, for good or ill, I focus on the problems of Gaza in the recognition that much that can be said about Gaza can also be said about larger
Palestinian issues.

NOTES
1. At the time Benjamin was director of international programs, an associate
professor of history and the Cleveland C. Burton Professor of International
Programs at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He has since become a
political officer in the Foreign Service of the USA. See his work on Ireland
and the end of the British Empire, The Irish Experience During the Second
World War: An Oral History (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004), Turning
Points in the Irish Revolution: The British Government and the Cost of
Indifference, 1912–1921 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Imperial
Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), Continental Drift: Britain and Europe From the End of

Empire to the Rise of Eurosceptism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2016).
2. For my work on nonviolence, see “Is Love Nonviolent?” The Acorn: Journal
of the Gandhi-King Society, (Volume XIII, 2, Spring-Summer, 2007),
“Spiritual Practice as a Foundation for Peacemaking.” Danielle Poe and
Eddy Souffrant, Parceling the Globe: Philosophical Exploration in
Globalization, Global Behavior, and Peace (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008),
“The War in Iraq: What Works?” Motives (Boston: Boston University, 2009),
“The Praxis of Nonviolence,” The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies
(19.2) (Philadelphia: Villanova University, 2009), Positive Peace: Reflections
on Peace Education, Nonviolence and Social Justice. VIBS, Philosophy of
Peace Series (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), “Rehabilitating Nonresistance,”
The Acorn: Journal of the Gandhi-King Society (2010), “Perpetual Violence?
Mimesis and Anamnesis.” Rob Gildert and Dennis Rothermel Remembrance
and Reconciliation (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), “Somaesthetics and
Nonviolence.” Social Philosophy Today, North American Society of Social
Philosophy (Vol. 28, 2012), “The Reasonableness of Sentimentalism
and  Violence.” Peace Review (Oct-Dec 24:4, 2012), “Loving Nonviolent
(Re)Parenting: A Research Note.” With Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon. Social


x

PREFACE

3.

4.

5.

6.

Advocacy and Systems Change Journal (2014), “Peace” in The Bloomsbury
Companion to Political Philosophy, Andrew Fiala (Editor) (London:
Bloomsbury, 2015).
All data in this paragraph from Association of International Development
Agencies (AIDA). Charting a New Course: Overcoming Statement in Gaza,
(Oxford: Oxfam, 2015), 5–6.
David McKittirick and David McVea, For Paisley’s direct influence on the
beginning of the Trouble’s in the 1960s see Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles:
Ireland’s Ordeal and the Search for Peace (New York: Palgrave, 2002),
52–59.
Quotations by Paisley and McGuinness from BBC. News: Northern
Ireland.2014. />Perhaps the best introduction, still, to the Palestinian complexities is Edward
W. Said’s The Question of Palestine, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, first
published in 1977. Though much has changed since its publication, in some
respects nothing has changed, and the trajectories that Said explicates have
continued.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Tension between the state of Israel and the Palestinians living in the Gaza
Strip reached new levels in summer 2014. On July 8, Israel launched
Operation Protective Edge that began seven weeks of bombardment of
Gaza. The Palestinians, in their turn, launched rocket attacks on Israel. In
all over 2200 people were killed.
Over the past year, in a series of conversations with my son, Benjamin
Grob-Fitzgibbon,1 prompted by the summer violence, we discussed what
a peace process might look like between Israel and Gaza learning from

the peace process in Northern Ireland. As a philosopher, ethicist, and a
pacifist, I brought to the conversation my work in nonviolence, peace, and
conflict studies.2 As a historian, and a “pragmatic just-warist,” Benjamin
brought his extensive work on terrorism, counter-terrorism, and the end
of the British Empire and Ireland. I read a paper based on our conversations at the annual conference of Concerned Philosophers for Peace at
Millersville University, PA, in October 2014. In the question-and-answer
session, one of the respondents said, “I can’t see you stopping this conversation short of writing a book.” This extended essay is, then, an expansion
of that original paper. I am grateful to Benjamin for his thoughtful comments and critique, without which I could not have written nearly as well
informed about Northern Ireland. Though we agree on many issues, our
differences made the conversations all the more fruitful. Needless to say, I
take full responsibility for this finished work, as at the end of the day, these
are my thoughts rather than his.
I am grateful for stimulating conversations with colleagues at the
annual conference of Concerned Philosophers for Peace, especially Barry
xi


xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gan and Andrew Fiala, and with colleagues (including Palestinian, Jewish,
and Egyptian) at the State University of New York, College at Cortland.
Thanks to my colleagues, Mechthild Nagel, Sebastian Purcell, and Nikolay
Karkov in our “small but mighty” philosophy department, to Robert
Spitzer for a careful reading of the manuscript and helpful comments on
the Second Amendment, to Moataz Emam for insights through Egyptian
eyes, and to Isa Jubran (a diligent proofreader) who helped in my initial
explorations of the issue and who gave me a valuable Palestinian perspective. I am privileged to work among an extraordinary and diverse group
of scholars.

Finally, thanks to Sarah Roughly at Palgrave who made the publishing
process smooth and easy.


CONTENTS

1

Background
Northern Ireland
The Gaza Strip
Notes

1
1
6
13

2

Terrorism
Responding to Terrorism
Non-state Terrorism
State Terrorism
State-Sponsored Terrorism
Notes

15
15
18

22
26
28

3

The Northern Ireland Peace Process
The Turning Point of 1988
A Reversal of Policy
The Blair Years
Notes

31
31
34
37
42

4

Toward a Peaceful Future
Similarities and Differences
Retelling an Empathic Narrative
Using Back-Channel Negotiations to Begin the Conversation
Finding a Suitable Honest Broker

45
45
47
51

53
xiii


xiv

CONTENTS

Disarming and Rejecting Violence
Employing the Principle of Self-Determination
Repatriating Political Prisoners
Affirming the Plasticity of Religious Tradition
in a Pluralist Society
Notes

59
63
67
70
74

Conclusion
Note

77
78

Bibliography

79

Index

85


GLOSSARY

British Mandate
B-Specials

Hamas
IDF
Hamas

Intifada

IRA
IRB
PA

PIRA

PLO

AND

ABBREVIATIONS

League of Nations mandate for Britain to administer Palestine

from 1922–1948.
The popular name of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC),
a quasi-military police force, mostly Protestant, formed in
1920 just before Irish partition.
Palestinian political and paramilitary organization, founded in
1988.
Israeli Defense Force.
Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya. Islamic Resistance
Movement. Initially an offshoot of the Gaza branch of the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Arabic word meaning “uprising,” or “shaking off,” often
referring to the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation
from 1987–1993.
Irish Republican Army. Irish republican armed group formed
in 1916.
Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians,
formed in 1858.
Palestinian Authority. Formed after the Oslo Accords in 1993
as an interim self-governing authority for the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. After 2006 it only refers to the West Bank.
Provisional Irish Republican Army. After a split in the IRA in
1972, the “Provisionals” adopted a more violent approach.
The PIRA is often simply known as the IRA, though
technically incorrect.
Palestine Liberation Organization.

xv


xvi

GLOSSARY AND ABBREVIATIONS

PSNI
RUC
SAS
SDLP

Sinn Féin
Stormont
UDA
UDR

UFF
UVF

Police Service of Northern Ireland, formed after the
disbandment of the RUC.
Royal Ulster Constabulary. Quasi-military police force of
Northern Ireland, recruited mainly from Protestant districts.
Special Air Service. British Special Forces formed in 1941.
Social and Democratic Labour Party. Republican political
party committed to democratic change, founded in 1970 out
of the civil rights movement.
“We Ourselves,” Irish republican party formed in 1905.
Seat of Northern Irish government from 1932–1972.
Ulster Defense Association. Largest loyalist paramilitary group
formed in 1971.
Ulster Defense Regiment. British Army regiment raised in
1970. Recruited mostly from Protestant districts. Disbanded

in 1992.
Ulster Freedom Fighters. Loyalist paramilitary group,
codename of the UDA.
Ulster Volunteer Force. Loyalist paramilitary group formed in
1912.


CHAPTER 1

Background

Abstract This chapter is a brief analysis of the background of the Troubles
in Northern Ireland, glancing at Irish/British history from 1160 to 1998.
There follows a brief analysis of the context for the violence in Gaza in the
summer of 2014, including Zionism, the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973,
and the Intifadas.
Keywords Northern Ireland • The Troubles • Partition • Catholicism •
Republicanism • Protestantism • Irish Republican Army (IRA) •
Paramilitaries • British Mandate • Palestine • Israel • The Gaza Strip •
Intifada • The Gaza War 2014 • Hamas • Israeli Defense Force (IDF)

NORTHERN IRELAND
The history of the relationship between Great Britain and Ireland (technically termed, together with over 6000 smaller islands, the British Isles) is
a long and tortuous one. According to Tim Pat Coogan, “In Ireland, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then as tragedy.”1 He says further:
Two sets of Christians, overseen by an arm’s length British Government,
and observed by a reluctant but increasingly involved Irish Government,
were about to engage in a war which would prove yet again that one man’s
terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.2

© The Author(s) 2016

A. Fitz-Gibbon, Talking to Terrorists, Non-Violence,
and Counter-Terrorism, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33837-8_1

1


2

A. FITZ-GIBBON

For all of recorded history peoples from the European mainland made
their way Westward until there was no further to go. The original inhabitants of the British Isles were subsequently merged with European
immigrants—the Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and
Normans. Since the collapse of the British Empire and the subsequent
enlargement of the European Union new waves of immigrants arrived,
first from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, to be joined more recently by
Eastern Europeans. Why the movement of peoples has been inexorably
from East to West is a question for anthropologists. I simply note it.
The people of Great Britain, by and large, absorbed the new peoples
into a slowly evolving British identity—at one and the same time British,
Angles and Saxon, Jute, Dane, Norman, and now African and Asian.
When these same European immigrants, or their children, crossed the
choppy waters of the Irish Sea to colonize Ireland in the 1160s—as they
had colonized Great Britain—it marked the beginning of a troubled history. The Irish had been a more or less self-contained and confident people. In some tellings, while the European mainland was in the midst of the
“dark ages,” Ireland alone preserved learning in its monasteries.3 Before
the Norman invasion, the Irish monks had sought to colonize Scotland
and Northumbria with a home-grown form of religion that was a blend of
Irish paganism and early Christianity that borrowed much from the East
and the desert fathers and mothers of Egypt. The Irish monks fought for
and lost Northumbria, and eventually Scotland, as the Roman mission

spread North and West. In time, the Roman Rite of Christianity would
conquer and dominate Ireland too. Later the Vikings fought over, won,
and then lost parts of Ireland. Those that remained intermarried and
became “as Irish as the Irish.”
However, the Normans were a different prospect and theirs was a more
thoroughgoing colonization. It was in the twelfth century that seeds were
sown of the seemingly interminable trouble between Great Britain and
Ireland—“eight hundred years of British oppression,” according to
Coogan.4 It was after the Norman invasion that the King of England considered himself King of Ireland too. Though the people of Great Britain, for
the most part, did not consider themselves a subject people, despite waves
of conquest and immigration from Europe, Irish identity from the twelfth
century onward was shaped by the imperial domination of the English.
Uprising and rebellions since then have in common the goal that the British
ought to leave Ireland, and that Ireland be governed by the Irish. “Brits
Out!” remained a rallying cry of the republican youth at the barricades in
Derry and Belfast after 1968.


BACKGROUND

3

The relationship between Great Britain and Ireland was further complicated during the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the subsequent
religious wars of the 1640s—the British under Cromwell—and later in the
late 1680s under William of Orange.5 Ironically, though the Celts of
Ireland had resisted the imposition of the Roman rite, by the end of the
first millennium CE, Ireland had become thoroughly Roman Catholic.
Ireland did not follow the lead of England under Henry VIII in breaking
with Rome. England’s subsequent independence from Rome and the
ascendency of Protestantism became an unbearable burden for remaining

Catholic Ireland. In the bid to make Ireland Protestant, “Catholic”
became associated with treachery, and penal laws against Catholics deeply
hurt the native population of Ireland. Says Coogan, “London regarded
the Protestant settlers in Ireland not merely as members of the favoured
Church, but as bulwarks of the crown.”6
A rebellion by the Irish in 1798 was brutally put down, giving the
British government an excuse to prorogue the Irish parliament, and
through the Act of Union in 1800 to merge the parliaments. The center
of economic and political power for the Irish shifted from Dublin to
London, and Ireland fell into further decay.
The nineteenth century saw a galvanizing of Republican sentiment,
exacerbated by the foreseeable, and perhaps preventable, great famine of
the 1840s. With a million dead, a million and a half condemned to unbearable poverty, and a million fleeing Ireland, mostly for the USA, but some
to England, anti-British sentiment was ignited into a blaze. These years
saw the beginning of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), otherwise
known as the Fenian Movement. The British government, in typical fashion, sought brutally to repress the movement. Coogan comments,
“Hangings, floggings, jailings and transportations added new martyrs to
the Irish physical force tradition.”7 By the 1880s, Home Rule for Ireland
had become an agenda item for the Westminster parliament. However,
Home Rule was always democratically a problematic issue. The North,
with a majority Protestant and pro-union population would never vote for
separation from the UK. The south, a majority in the island as a whole,
largely Catholic and pro-Republican would always vote for separation. This
became the horns of a dilemma that characterized the relation of Britain
and Ireland in the twentieth century. A democratic vote in the whole of
Ireland would likely turn to separation from the UK.  The northern six
counties would likely rebel. In 1912, 470,000 people signed the Ulster
Covenant with 100,000 enrolled in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).8

4

A. FITZ-GIBBON

Conservatives in Great Britain generally supported the UVF. The fear of a
rebellion by Northern Irish Protestants underlay much of the policy of
Westminster to Northern Ireland, and why British policy was perceived as
uneven toward the Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries. Despite wanting to remain part of the UK—mostly for religious reasons—Northern
Irish Protestants had a deep historical distrust of the English.9 Immigration
to Northern Ireland came from Scottish dissent rather from the English
establishment—the same dissent was recently highlighted in the 2014 referendum for Scottish independence. Northern Ireland Protestantism has
always held a distrust of both the Irish and the English.
The compromise solution was the partition of Ireland. The small, but
significant, uprising at Easter in 1916 was followed by a heavy handed and
woefully unproductive reaction by the British, the forming of the Irish
Republican Army (IRA) out of the IRB, and the bitter rivalry between
Republican leaders Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera. In 1922, the
compromise was formalized in the partition of the Irish Free State and
Northern Ireland. Ireland formally became a republic in 1949.
However, the compromise of partition did not sit well with the
Catholics in the North who remained Republican and became an underclass, dominated by the Protestant majority. Fearful of the growth of
Catholicism in the North, mostly by a birthrate that outstripped that of
the Protestants, Unionist Protestantism ensured its dominance by unjust
practices in employment, schooling, and housing,10 effectively creating a
system of apartheid.11 For example, in 1970, “only four hundred out of
ten thousand workers in the shipyard [the primary industry of Northern
Ireland] were Catholic.”12 According to David McKittrick and David
McVea, “The idea was ingrained in many in the unionist community that
Catholics per se were enemies of the state.”13 So egregious were the injustices, that by the mid-1960s Northern Ireland was a powder keg waiting
to be ignited.

The civil rights movement, on the back of successes in the USA, worked
toward non-violent social change through civil disobedience.14 The
Northern Irish government at Stormont, with its police wing, the Royal
Ulster Constabulary (RUC), responded harshly. A civil rights march
through Derry on October 5, 1968, was brutally disrupted. Television
coverage meant that images were seen by many of the police brutality. The
British government at Westminster continued to turn a blind eye. Eamon
McCann, a Derry socialist said, “a howl of elemental rage was unleashed


BACKGROUND

5

across Northern Ireland, and it was clear that things were never going to
be the same again.”15 Rioting and violence broke out by both Catholic
Republicans and Protestant Loyalists. Though most attention has been
focused on the Catholic IRA (probably because it was IRA terror that
affected the British mainland, and therefore received most emphasis in the
British press) it was Protestant paramilitaries who exploded the first bomb,
fired the first shot, and killed the first policeman.16 The rejuvenated IRA
responded swiftly in kind, and though the Loyalist paramilitaries continued a campaign of terror against the Catholics, the IRA quickly became
responsible for more deaths and bombings.
The British response to the Troubles was an increased military presence
on the streets of Northern Ireland in support of the quasi-military
RUC. The RUC before the Troubles was only 11 % Catholic. Once the
Troubles began, Catholics left the service and few were recruited.17 The
British Army was bolstered by the Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR), a
newly formed unit of the British Army, but again drawn largely from the
Protestant population. The RUC and Army policed mostly in Catholic

districts, further adding to the sense of injustice among Catholics, leading
many toward republicanism. Though most Catholics would not engage in
terrorist violence themselves, the majority supported the IRA to a greater
or lesser extent. In the midst of state repression, the IRA was perceived as
at least doing something—attested to by the broad support of Sinn Féin
among the Catholic population after 1982. Though Gerry Adams has
constantly claimed that the IRA and Sinn Féin are not the same organization—the “simplistic notion that Sinn Féin represents the IRA or is its
‘political wing’ is wrong”—he has constantly argued that the cause of
republicanism had to be advanced on two fronts: the guerilla war with the
British and politically. Sinn Féin would never condemn the actions of the
IRA. He said:
Whether people in the nationalist areas agreed or disagreed with the IRA
and all its actions, they recognized it as their Army, knew for the most part
which of the neighbors were members, and referred to it simply as the
“RA.” It enjoyed credibility and popular support.18

The IRA was, thus, on both sides perceived as the army of the nationalist cause against the British.19 An independent voice from the USA, who
later would be instrumental in the peace process, George Mitchell said:


6

A. FITZ-GIBBON

Sinn Féin has consistently denied any relationship with the IRA. That denial
is believed by few in Ireland, north and south, or in Britain. The police and
security services of both the British and Irish governments told us they had
overwhelming evidence of a close relationship between Sinn Féin and the
IRA, including overlapping leadership.20

The interpretation of Westminster policy in the streets of Derry and
Belfast in the 1970s and 1980s was brutal. An Amnesty International
Report in June 1978 documented the following by the RUC:
General beating and kicking; bending the wrist backwards; forcing the suspect to run on in place or stand for hours; pulling the hairs on a prisoners
chest or lifting him by his moustache; pouring a cola liquid into the suspect’s ears; banging the prisoner’s head against the wall; holding his head
under water; kicking and squeezing the testicles; placing a plastic bag, a
hood, or a pair of soiled underpants over the suspect’s head; making the
prisoner behave in a bizarre manner (one man was ridden like a horse by his
interrogator, was forced to eat mucus from a policeman’s nose, was ordered
to count holes in the wall, and was spun around and around); burning a
prisoner’s hand against radiator pipes, ordering a man to stand with his
underpants around his knees while interrogators made insulting remarks
about his genitals.

Women interviewed by the Amnesty mission reported that they had
been threatened with rape.21
Beside the violence of the state in the form of the RUC and army, the
Catholic population also faced the paramilitary violence of the Ulster
Defense Association (UDA), the UVF, the Ulster Freedom Fighters
(UFF), and a host of smaller armed gangs. During the Troubles Republican
paramilitaries killed 2139, Loyalist paramilitaries killed 1050, and security
forces killed 367.22

THE GAZA STRIP
The intractable problem facing the Palestinians has been expressed by
Edward W. Said in this way:
I have tried to show that the Muslim and Christian Palestinians who lived
in Palestine for hundreds of years until they were driven out in 1948, were
unhappy victims of the same movement whose aim had been to end the
victimization of Jews by Christian Europe.23

BACKGROUND

7

Northern Ireland has a population of 1.8 million. The Gaza Strip has a
slightly higher population at 1.816 million. At 5345 square miles,
Northern Ireland is a small province, with a population density of 336
people per square mile. The Gaza Strip is smaller still with only 139 square
miles—a narrow piece of land that borders Israel and Egypt, with the
Mediterranean Sea along its length of 25 miles. Gaza has a population
density of 13,064 people per square mile, making it one of the most
densely populated, low rise areas on the planet. (The USA by comparison
has a population density of 84 people per square mile.) In other words,
Gaza is small and overcrowded, and is becoming increasingly crowded
with a population growth of around 3.4 % per year. When the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) attack, there is nowhere to run, no place to hide.
Gaza, as were the broader Palestinian territories, was part of the
Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1918 and the advent of the British
Mandate. Under Ottoman rule, the many villages of Gaza, inhabited by
Arabs—mostly Muslims with some Christians—lived in relative peace with
one another and the very small minority of Jewish people. In the 1880s
there were approximately 600,000 Palestinians, 10 % of whom were
Christians, the rest Sunni Muslims, and around 25,000 Jews.24
The first tragedy to strike Gaza, in a long repetition of disasters,
occurred during the First World War. The Ottoman Turks sided with
Germany; hence the Ottoman Empire was at war with the British Empire.
In 1917, during bloody battles, the British conquered the city of Gaza on
a third attempt. Prior to the battle the Turks had insisted that the Arab

population flee, for fear that the population might prohibit the troops.
Tom Segev tells of the first evacuation of Gaza with the expelling of some
40,000 residents. He says, “The roads were filled with refugees … all of
them ravaged by hunger, fear and disaster.”25 Further
[British General] Allenby’s force was composed of 75,000 infantrymen,
17,000 cavalrymen, and 475 artillery pieces. More than half this force participated in the battle of Be’ersheba; six tanks took part in the attacks on
Gaza, and the city was almost leveled.26

However, the greater long-term threat to Gaza was not the war, but
rather the steady growth of Zionism that would challenge the very existence
of Arab Palestine. Zionism began as notions of nationalism and colonialism
swept through western European countries. Intellectual Jews in Eastern
Europe—under the twin burdens of assimilation and persecution in


8

A. FITZ-GIBBON

ongoing and intensifying pogroms—began questioning why the Jewish
people ought not to have their own homeland. With its prominence in
Jewish myth, folk lore and scripture, the eyes of some turned toward
Palestine, with the aim of making Palestine a Jewish state—once more a
Jewish state was the Zionist viewpoint. According to Segev, from the
1880s onward Zionists began a slow and steady colonization of Palestine.
From the beginnings until 1948 by buying land from Palestinians—“the
Zionist movement had always planned to buy Palestine with money”27 was
the modus operandi. (This is, however, doubted by Palestinians.) From
1948 onward, simply taking land, often by brute force, and other times by
causing the indigenous population to flee, became the norm.28 After the

Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, British policy was to favor
Zionist immigration.
However, Jewish immigration was slow. According to Segev, in the
early days of Zionism, most Jews who left Europe moved to the USA. He
says:
Close to 2.5 million Jews left Europe prior to World War I; most went
to the United States. In the 1920s three-quarters of a million Jews emigrated; more than half went to the United States. Even at the height of
Jewish immigration, only 4 out of every 1,000 of the world’s Jews came to
Palestine.29

Nonetheless, the smaller number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine had
a far greater impact than the greater number that immigrated to the
USA. In some respects, it was not the number of immigrants that counted,
but their quality and zeal in establishing a Jewish homeland. Segev quotes
Chaim Weizmann as saying “If we succeed in bringing 100,000 productive working Jews, the way of the Jewish commonwealth will be paved and
we will see it in our lifetime.”30
The major issue during this colonization process, as has always been the
case with imperialism, is that the land was not empty of people. The sad
history of western European colonization has been the expropriation of
lands already lived on by others. All Western powers have an uneasy historical memory of wrongs done to indigenous peoples. With the passage
of time, the memory begins to fade. However, this is not the case in
Palestine where the colonization is as recent as the latest news of a new
Jewish settlement in the West Bank. In the space of a few decades in the
twentieth century hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns were eradicated, or else appropriated and their names changed.