Can Mitchell turn Jerusalem into Belfast?

US President Barack Obama's
appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his new Middle East
envoy is a good choice. Mitchell showed even-handedness
uncharacteristic of US officials when he led a fact-finding mission to
the region in 2000.

Had its recommendations been followed -- cessation of all violence and
a full freeze of Israeli settlement construction on occupied
Palestinian land -- the peace process might have made progress.
Mitchell, who is already in the Middle East, helped broker the 1998
Belfast Agreement, the key to ending decades of strife in Northern
Ireland. Because of historical similarities, that peace agreement is an
important precedent for Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

Before 1948, European Jewish settlers, newly-arrived in Palestine,
wanted their own state once British colonial rulers withdrew. But
because Jews were a minority, the only way to achieve this was a
partition that the majority Arab Palestinian population, fearing
dispossession, bitterly opposed. When Israel was established in 1948,
most Palestinians were forced from their homeland, and those remaining
became second-class citizens in a "Jewish state."

The modern conflict in Ireland began when Great Britain, facing
resistance from Irish nationalists, decided to withdraw after centuries
of rule. But the Protestant ruling class -- a quarter of the population
-- descended from English and Scottish settlers, insisted that Ireland
remain tied to Britain. These unionists refused to live in a state with
a nationalist Catholic majority.

To appease the unionist minority, which threatened violent rebellion if
it did not get its way, Britain partitioned Ireland in 1921, creating
Northern Ireland, an entity whose legitimacy nationalists refused to
recognize.

As Israeli Jews did to Palestinians, Protestants institutionalized
their own culture and religion as the official creed and violently
suppressed expressions of nationalist identity. In the words of its
first prime minister, Northern Ireland's seat of government at
Belfast's Stormont Castle was a "Protestant parliament for a Protestant
people." Catholics faced systematic discrimination in jobs and housing.

Nationalists launched a civil rights movement in the 1960s inspired by
the one in the US. Protestant unionists violently resisted demands to
share power and reform, but the numerical growth and assertiveness of
the nationalist Catholic population within Northern Ireland made such
intransigence untenable.

In 1972, Britain sent in troops and imposed direct rule. During 30
years of "The Troubles," 3,700 people died at the hands of the Irish
Republican Army (IRA), Protestant militias, British forces and others.

The Mitchell-led Belfast Agreement ended formal Protestant hegemony in
favor of equality, mitigating partition's injustices. It promised that
government power "shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on
behalf of all the people" and guaranteed "just and equal treatment for
the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities."

Decades of bloody conflict left deep social divisions. But a framework
for nondiscriminatory democratic governance has allowed nationalists
and unionists within Northern Ireland to begin to shed their siege
mentalities. While formal partition of Ireland remains, it is
disappearing on the ground as anyone can live, work and move freely,
and official cross-border bodies are integrating the infrastructure and
economies of the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland.

The power-sharing executive in Belfast, led by staunchly nationalist
Sinn Fein (closely affiliated with the IRA) and the hardline Democratic
Unionist Party, was once as inconceivable as a government made up of
members of Hamas and Israeli politicians would be today. US diplomacy
played a key role by putting pressure on the stronger parties --the
British government and Protestant unionists -- in favor of the weaker
nationalist side. Instead of shunning Sinn Fein the US, prodded by the
Irish American lobby, insisted it be brought into the process.

By 2010, Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in Israel, the West
Bank and Gaza Strip combined. The two groups can no more be totally
separated than Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists in
Ireland.

Like Irish nationalists, Palestinians will never recognize the "right"
of another group to discriminate against them. Like Protestant
unionists did, Israeli Jews insist on their own state. Israel's
"solution" is to cage Palestinians into ghettos -- like Gaza -- and
periodically bomb them into submission just so Israeli Jews, their
relative numbers dwindling, can artificially maintain a Jewish state.

If Mitchell is allowed to apply Northern Ireland's lessons, then there
may be a way out. But he goes to Jerusalem with few of the advantages
he brought to Belfast. The Obama administration remains committed for
now to the failed partition formula of "a Jewish state" and a
"Palestinian state" and maintains the Bush administration's misguided
boycott of Hamas, which overwhelmingly won Palestinian elections in
2006. And the Israel lobby -- much more powerful than its Irish
American counterpart -- warps US policy to favor the stronger side, an
intransigent Israel committing war crimes. If these policies don't
change, Mitchell's efforts will be wasted and escalating violence will
fill the political vacuum.