Situation in the Middle East and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
We very recently marked the centenary of Ireland’s accession to the League of Nations, our first faltering steps as a newly formed nation on the international stage and our first subscription to the idea of an international rules-based order. This was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, founded in the aftermath of the calamity that was the First World War. It turned out to be a morning without noon, with Europe again descending into warfare less than a generation later, but it was perhaps the first international attempt to formulate some kind of framework to preserve some semblance of our better selves in the face of unspeakable violence.
There is a duality in human nature. We have a common shared humanity but also a capacity for inhumanity. We have a capacity for kindness but also for savagery, for compassion but also for deeply ingrained hatred. We must be clear-eyed also in recognising how the brutalising effects of warfare, aggression, occupation and oppression tilt that balance. We have seen this week the slow festering of ongoing conflict and oppression erupt into atrocities that have shocked all of us and must be abhorred and condemned in the strongest terms. Many of those rules we have set ourselves to guard against our own worst natures have been shattered.
Taking just the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention as an example, regarding the taking of hostages, the use of collective punishment, the mass forcible transfer of people, and the abject and deliberate failure in the obligations of an occupying power to provide for hygiene and public health, there is a strong case to answer that each of these, at the very least, has been transgressed. International institutions, including the UN and the International Criminal Court, must play a stronger role in holding the perpetrators of these heinous acts to account. I am reminded of Martin Luther King telling us that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice”. It is very hard to feel that right now because the violence, the barbarism and the savagery we have seen perpetrated on Israel and in Gaza is egregious and abhorrent but it is not new. This is a recurring nightmare and it is not a status quo that can be maintained. The long lens of history will see this resolved for better or for worse, either through a lasting settlement and a lasting peace that would have to be underpinned by a two-state solution or through the complete subjugation or eradication of a people and a nation. There is a choice to be made between our better selves and our worse nature.
We chose as a fledgeling state 100 years ago to engage in the structures of multilateralism. We must use that voice today on an international stage to push for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the end to collective punishment, the unconditional release of hostages, the facilitation of humanitarian aid, and in the longer term an equitable and lasting peace.
