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Gaza: did the West learn nothing from the peace process in Ireland? [1]
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Date: 2023-11
Growing up during the Troubles in the North of Ireland, and subsequently as a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan and Angola, I learned a couple of things about war.
I learned what it feels like to be powerless and scared under the guns of hostile troops. I learned that whatever stories combatants spin to justify their actions, most of the suffering they cause is unjustifiable. And I learned that even though violence is unpredictable, it can predictably become self-perpetuating until cooler heads prevail. Those cooler heads are very rarely the fighters themselves.
Warring parties almost always need a hand to help them out of the abyss. This is all the more true where conflicts have become endemic, and where cultures of violence and dehumanisation have taken root.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people, particularly Israel’s illegal and morally corrosive occupation of the Palestinian territories, has long demonstrated this. The vile rhetoric of the Hamas leadership after its crimes on 7 October, which saw 1,200 people murdered, was replete with the hateful language of eliminating Israel. Not to be outdone, the Israeli defence minister described Palestinians as “human animals” before launching a full out attack on Gaza. Israel’s military action has so far claimed 11,000 lives, including 4,500 children and 3,000 women, according to the UN and the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Given the violence that has been meted out over the years, the extremists’ desire for more violence (on both sides) is perhaps understandable. As Seamus Heaney described, brutalised societies are filled with people ready
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/gaza-did-the-west-learn-nothing-from-the-peace-process-in-ireland/
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