The Irish Government recognised the State of Palestine yesterday. Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin argues that the move is a cynical one, designed to appease a persistent solidarity movement with symbolic actions of little substance.
Yesterday, Ireland, along with Norway and Spain, recognised the State of Palestine in what was described in Western media as a “historic” move. Taoiseach Simon Harris declared that, “We must be on the right side of history”.
From a tent in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, an 11-year-old girl asked her uncle with a crying emoji, “Will recognising a state stop killing us?”
The recognition of the State of Palestine, decades too late, is an effort by Simon Harris and his government to be seen to be doing something – anything at all – for the Palestinian people. Hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland have taken to the streets repeatedly for the last 7 months. People have engaged in direct actions, organised boycotts and solidarity gigs. There have been protests in every county.
Boycott, divestment and sanctions, along with an end to the military use of Shannon Airport, have been the core demands of the movement for months. Harris and Co. have so far refused to budge on any of these. But the strength of the movement is such that they couldn’t simply do nothing. Instead, they are offering a symbolic gesture in the hopes that this will suffice.
Seen, Heard – Not Helped
In one sense, this is a victory for the movement in Ireland and its persistence. This would not have happened if the Government had not been under sustained pressure since October. It is a step forward in the sense that the Government is running out of symbolic gestures with which they can try to appease us. And after months of campaigning with little to show for it, this could provide a boost for those who have been on the streets, if we use it to press on and demand more.
But we should be under no illusions that this action on its own will do anything to stop the genocide in Gaza, let alone help to bring about a liberated Palestine. Simon Harris and this government are the masters of gestures devoid of substance.
“We in Ireland see you, we recognise you, we respect you”, said Harris yesterday.
What does it mean to recognise a state if you do nothing to stop the people of the land from being wiped off it, and nothing to help those who have already been expelled to return?
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, called this out back in March:
“There’s this tendency to be very supportive with rhetoric, as Ireland has, but when it comes to taking concrete actions, there is zero. Not a little. Zero. The countries that have been most outspoken, like Ireland, what have they done in practice? Nothing. And this is shameful. It is disgraceful.”
Without concrete action in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions, state recognition amounts to nothing more than an acknowledgement of a people as they are being destroyed. Palestine is to be recognised while we continue to grant one of the chief architects of the genocide the use of one of our airports for its military. Palestine is to be recognised while we continue exporting dual use technology that can be used for military purposes to Israel – €70 million worth in 2023 alone. All the while, the Irish Government continues to condemn Palestinians’ resistance to their own annihilation.
Saving Zionism
Nor can this move be divorced from the wider context of a Western order that is torn between backing Israel’s genocide to the hilt, and distancing itself from the worst of the horror in order to salvage its own image and the Zionist project itself. Parts of the Western establishment are now attempting to essentialise Netanyahu and treat his genocide as an evil anomaly, instead of what it really is: the logic of Zionism and settler colonialism being brought to their ultimate conclusions.
Baked into the Irish Government’s idea of Palestinian State Recognition is a commitment to the two-state solution, where, as Harris puts it, “Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights to self-determination and statehood”.
At this point, any political leader flogging the two state delusion has to be wilfully trying to sell us a pup. A non-contiguous Palestinian state on 22% of the land of Palestine, which would have denied the right of return for 6 million Palestinian refugees and accepted the presence of a genocidal, settler colonial ethno-state and nuclear power as its neighbour, was never a just or acceptable solution.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was to use the illusion of its possibility as cover for Israel to expand its settlements in the West Bank, maintain its brutal blockade on Gaza and bring about the total ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people. This is not conjecture: We are told as much repeatedly by what now constitutes the bulk of the Israeli political establishment.
The Palestinian Territories have now been so divided up into bantustans, settlements, walls and checkpoints that even the unjust two-state solution is an impossibility. Any attempt to resurrect it as an idea cannot be genuine. It is an attempt to save the Zionist settler colonial project and to restore the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority that has collaborated with the Zionist regime to crush Palestinian resistance in the West Bank.
The Government is running out of room
Where do we go from here, then? Well, we should take heart from the fact that this Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil-Green Party government is running out of room. They have recognised a Palestinian State, whose territory is being obliterated before our eyes. They have said they will intervene on South Africa’s genocide case – an implicit admission that they think a genocide is happening. Eamon Ryan himself is on record saying he thinks there are “irrefutable” points in South Africa’s case.
They will want us to laud them for dragging them, kicking and screaming, to the gesture of state recognition. We must cut through the back slapping by the Government and demand more. The platitudes won’t wash anymore. Nor will the blood wash from their hands if they don’t take real action in the form of BDS and the end of US military use of Shannon Airport. We must continue to build our movement to force them to do this.
A genocidal, settler colonial, apartheid ethnostate has no right to exist. Israel must be isolated by the world, just as Apartheid South Africa was, to create the space for the Palestinian people to win their own liberation. The settler colonial project must be dismantled and Zionism defeated as an ideology.
In its place? A single, liberated, democratic state of Palestine, with equal rights for all who live there – from the river to the sea.
