The conflict in Israel and Palestine raises strong feelings across the world, but particularly in Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is among the most pro-Palestinian countries in Europe. In Northern Ireland, Israeli flags can be seen in unionist or loyalist neighbourhoods, while Palestinian colours fly in republican and nationalist areas. The events of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath appear to have done little to change these dynamics.

Reasons for these allegiances are complex and rooted in shared experiences of imperialism. The parallels between the situations in Ireland and Palestine were most obvious in 1937 and 1938, as British officials published plans to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in much the same way Ireland had been divided along sectarian lines decades earlier. The Government of Ireland Act (1920) designated six of the island’s 32 counties as Northern Ireland, passing through Parliament without a single Irish vote in its favour. A year later the Anglo-Irish Treaty formed the remaining 26 counties into the Irish Free State as a self-governing dominion within the Empire. A civil war ensued in the Free State, and Northern Ireland saw intercommunal bloodshed as nationalists and republicans attempted to undo the partition and Treaty settlements.

By 1936 Ireland was largely quiescent, but the British faced a challenge in Palestine. In what became known as the Great Revolt, Muslims and Christians, described collectively as Arabs, attacked British authorities and Jewish settlers, who responded in kind. Attempting to garner support, British officials promised the region to both local Arabs and Zionist Jews. The 1922 League of Nations mandate granting the British Empire governance of Palestine codified the promise to Zionists, while stipulating that the establishment of a Jewish homeland must not ‘prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities’. In 1919 there were approximately 58,000 Jews in Palestine, with ‘non-Jewish communities’ constituting 91.7 per cent of the population, but statistical realities did not guide decision-making. In fact, some officials were completely ignorant of them. Lord Curzon declared himself ‘absolutely staggered’ by the figures. By 1937 the Jewish population had risen to 386,084, comprising 27.9 per cent of the total.

Peel and partition

The violence in Palestine subsided in 1937, while a British Royal Commission chaired by Lord Peel investigated grievances there. The Peel Commission report recommended partition. Northern and coastal areas were to become a Jewish state within the Empire, while the remainder would be attached to the British protectorate of Transjordan. The report used Irish partition as a model, referring to ‘the impossibility of uniting all Ireland under a single parliament’ and insisting ‘the gulf between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is wider than that which separates Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State’. Ireland was at that time the most prominent territory in the Empire to have experienced partition; reactions there were often conditioned by this context.

Many newspapers with nationalist roots condemned the Peel plan unreservedly. Dublin’s Irish Independent wrote: ‘Partition is the Englishman’s favourite way out of a difficulty. But it is in itself a confession of failure.’ The Cork Evening Echo declared: ‘The tragic blunder of partition is being repeated.’ Nationalist organs in Northern Ireland were even more scathing. According to the Derry Journal, ‘Britain cares not a fig for the welfare of either Jew or Arab, any more than for Catholic or Protestant Irishman, except in so far as the one can be played off against the other for purposes of Imperial policy’.

Eamon de Valera, President of the Free State’s Executive Council, denounced the Peel plan at a League of Nations meeting in September 1937: ‘Partition of their national territory was the cruellest wrong that could be done to any people.’ Arab activists also drew parallels between Palestine, Ireland and other imperial territories. The Syrian politician Ihsan Al Jabri insisted that the British must negotiate with Palestinian Arab leaders, just as it had with Ireland’s Michael Collins and de Valera, Egypt’s Saad Zaghloul and India’s Mahatma Gandhi.

It might be assumed that Northern Ireland unionists would support partition on principle, but their mouthpieces were initially divided. The Belfast News-Letter argued in October 1937 that the British should focus on restoring order in Palestine, not conciliating the Arab rebels that, the paper insisted, were inspired by the Irish separatists. Other newspapers were more circumspect. The Belfast Telegraph remarked that partition was better than civil war, an argument that British and Irish unionists had employed decades earlier. The Northern Whig called partition a ‘counsel of despair’ that ‘foreshadows political and racial strife in an intensified form’.

But most unionists had coalesced around support for Palestinian partition by 1938 for two reasons. Firstly, the revolt revived following the Peel report, prompting unionists to escalate their imperial, law-and-order rhetoric. Secondly, de Valera had struck a deal in April to transfer the ‘Treaty ports’ – naval installations on Ireland’s west coast under British control – to his government. Unionists feared this was a step towards undoing the Treaty settlement altogether, including partition. James Craig, Lord Craigavon, Northern Ireland’s unionist prime minister, assured his constituents that British plans to divide Palestine showed they were committed to partition. By June 1938 the Northern Whig completed an about-face, approving partition on the grounds that a Jewish state would strengthen the Empire and provide ‘a safeguard for the Jews against Arab aggression’.

‘Our own activities’

Though antisemitism was not as obviously pervasive in Ireland as elsewhere in Europe, a generally racialised view of the controversy was evident. Dublin’s Evening Herald described Jews and Arabs as incompatible, one clearly superior to the other: ‘Since the influx of Jews to Palestine after the Nazi purge, that part of the country which they occupied has developed to an amazing degree … They have outclassed the Arabs in industry and enterprise.’ Speaking to a Belfast audience after visiting Palestine, Presbyterian minister W.A. Montgomery said Jews were ‘literally making the desert bloom as the rose’, but ‘Arabs were conservative and lazy’. Ireland’s small but active Jewish population contributed to the debate. A visit to Dublin from Maurice Perlzweig of the World Zionist Organization in March 1938 became a forum on partition. Arthur Newman insisted ‘they must not barter away one inch of Palestinian territory’, as it was needed for refugees from Europe. Bernard Shillman disagreed, arguing there were ‘seeds of the growth of Jewish sovereignty and independence in the offer of partition’. Such comments are reminiscent of arguments concerning the Anglo-Irish Treaty almost two decades earlier. Abraham Gudansky echoed Irish nationalist rhetoric when he blamed ‘the perfidy of the British Government’ for disagreements among Jews.

Meanwhile, the revolt intensified. News from Palestine was reminiscent of recent Irish history, as ambushes and assassinations proliferated. As the Cork Evening Echo remarked: ‘We, at least, cannot condemn the Arabs without indicting our own national activities.’ British methods of ‘official reprisals’, such as blowing up houses and bombing towns, also sounded familiar. The nationalist Ulster Herald called these operations ‘phases of tyranny that we in this country experienced to the fullest not so many years ago’.

On 9 November 1938 a new British-appointed body issued a report that changed the future of Palestine again. The Palestine Partition Commission recommended that partition be abandoned. The Evening Herald encapsulated the effect with the headline: ‘Partition is Dead – In Palestine.’ The British did abandon the Peel plan, and the next idea to divide Palestine emanated from the United Nations in 1947.

A lasting partition

Today it is easy to stereotype support for either Israel or Palestinians, particularly in Northern Ireland. Political parties reflect these divisions, often explaining their sympathies through local experiences. Brian Kingston, a legislator with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), told the press: ‘We see Israel as having suffered terribly from terrorism over the years just like we have.’ Mary Lou McDonald, leader of nationalist party Sinn Féin, called for the Republic of Ireland to expel the Israeli ambassador and support prosecutions of Israel for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

Decades ago, these recognisable affiliations were not as clear-cut. News organisations, politicians and members of the public formulated their opinions based on their perceptions of empires, nations, races and how international events might affect local issues. Even in the tense atmosphere of the 1930s, Irish commentators asserted that it was possible to condemn antisemitism while also refusing to support the victimisation of Palestinian Arabs. Irish people had actually experienced partition, and their predictions – initially from nationalists and unionists – that dividing Palestine was unworkable, proved prophetic. Their reactions show that it would be a mistake to see the Peel plan as a precursor to the ‘two-state solution’ of contemporary parlance. While that phrase suggests the idea to place both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on equal footing in the modern international system, Irish people saw in the partition idea the imposition of an imperial strategy, devised by outsiders to meet their objectives – not to lay the foundations for a lasting peace.
 

M.C. Rast is the author of Shaping Ireland’s Independence: Nationalist, Unionist, and British Solutions to the Irish Question, 1909–1925 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).