Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique (May 2024)
Les Troubles et le conflit au Moyen-Orient : alliances coloniales et solidarité transnationale
Abstract
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, particularly between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the urban landscape of certain Catholic districts took on the colours of the Palestinian flag. Whether painted on murals, hung on buildings or waved at demonstrations, the flags reflected an identification with the Palestinian cause that, like the Northern Ireland conflict, was read through the prism of the colonial question and partition. In addition, the experiences of incarceration, administrative detention and hunger strike provided fertile ground for transnational solidarity links to flourish between certain armed groups such as the Irish Republican Army or the Irish National Liberation Army and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. These links of solidarity between certain Northern Irish republican factions and certain Palestinian organisations took the form of exchanges of weapons, ammunition and knowledge of explosives. Much later, in the early 2000s, after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the start of the second Intifada, Palestinian flags once again made a very visible appearance at republican demonstrations, such as the annual Bloody Sunday commemorations. Israeli flags also appeared in some Protestant neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland, notably on the initiative of the Ulster Defence Association, highlighting a discourse based on the obsidional mentality of the Unionist community, and often nourished by religious beliefs. While peace was signed in Northern Ireland, and the violence gradually subsided, the conflict shifted to the symbolic level, suggesting that the reconciliation process was not entirely successful. Through a study of primary sources (interviews, activist press, grey literature, general press) this essay sheds light on the origins of the republican identification with the Palestinian cause, its implications and its use by the Sinn Féin republican party for pragmatic purposes. It also looks at unionist demonstrations in support of Israel, trying to identify political and religious affinities. This support for the belligerents in the Middle East conflict allows us to question the unfinished nature of the peace process in Northern Ireland, and the divisions that persist « in hearts and minds », in the words of John Hume.
