{"id":316023,"date":"2026-02-25T06:11:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T06:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/316023\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T06:11:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T06:11:13","slug":"palestinians-need-unified-leadership-say-bertie-ahern-and-gerry-adams-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/316023\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians need unified leadership, say Bertie Ahern and Gerry Adams \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bringing an end to conflicts involves speaking to participants on the basis of parity of esteem, but no party should be allowed \u201cshoot their way to the table\u201d, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern<\/a> told TDs and senators on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Ahern and former Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader Gerry Adams<\/a> spoke to the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs about the Irish peace process and whether its lessons could be of use in the Middle East and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Both men said it was crucial for the Palestinian<\/a> people to have a unified leadership that was pursuing a set of defined objectives.<\/p>\n

Without a unified political position, Ahern said, \u201cit is a road to nowhere\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> leader said there was a need for an international peace conference attended by a unified Palestinian leadership and an end to the focus on violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they don\u2019t work now, it will all just re-enact itself again. Those kids will grow up and those kids will become adults and those kids will become freedom fighters or terrorists or whichever side you are on. And that\u2019s the sure thing,\u201d Ahern said.<\/p>\n

Asked by Labour TD Duncan Smith<\/a> whether governments should engage with Hamas<\/a>, Adams said governments did talk to them \u201cwhen it suits\u201d and \u201cwe can\u2019t choose the representatives of the Palestinian people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hamas was \u201ca fundamentalist Islamic\u201d organisation and he did not agree with that, but that was beside the point, he said.<\/p>\n

Ahern said that during the Irish peace process the Mitchell Principles established the rule that parties involved in violence could not be at the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cSovereign governments can\u2019t talk to people who want to shoot their way on to the table,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Mitchell Principles were \u201ccrucial\u201d to the Irish peace process, so talks based on similar rules should be looked at in the Middle East and in conflicts elsewhere, such as Africa.<\/p>\n

When trying to get parties to engage in a peace process \u201cit is not so simple that you can talk to whoever the people are\u201d, he said in response to Fine Gael<\/a> Senator Garret Ahearn.<\/p>\n

Ahearn said Adams, in his opening remarks, when referring to the conflict in Gaza<\/a>, said peace would never be secured through security or military means.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was not always the position of the IRA<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen did that change happen within the IRA and how did it come about?\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Adams said successive IRA leaderships engaged in dialogue over the course of the conflict, with Protestant church leaders, loyalists and unionists.<\/p>\n

He said the IRA was \u201cvery, very, very much\u201d a response to what was \u201chappening on the ground\u201d and British \u201cmilitarisation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in consciously went after Irish America, the Irish government and the late John Hume<\/a> to ensure \u201can alternative\u201d was there, he said.<\/p>\n

In his opening remarks, Ahern said it was virtually impossible to create a peace process without parties who were committed to resolving the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cReal peace and reconciliation take root when the leaderships on both sides of a conflict accept that the only outcome that will be sustainable in the longer term is one involving compromise and accommodation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Adams called for the immediate passing of the Occupied Territories Bill<\/a> and the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill, 2023.<\/p>\n

He told Cathy Bennett of Sinn F\u00e9in how he considered the Board of Peace established by US president Donald Trump<\/a> to be \u201can exercise in colonialism\u201d and he did not see anything coming out of it.<\/p>\n

Ahern said illegal Israeli settlements were \u201cobnoxious\u201d and designed to \u201cwreck\u201d any prospect of a two-state solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bringing an end to conflicts involves speaking to participants on the basis of parity of esteem, but no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[894,969,895,3409,3660,4502,42,27238,3410,17203,43,4503,12636,4268,3415,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-316023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-bertie-ahern","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-fianna-fail","11":"tag-gaza-strip","12":"tag-gerry-adams","13":"tag-hamas","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-irish-republican-army","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-john-hume","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-occupied-territories-bill","20":"tag-oireachtas","21":"tag-palestine","22":"tag-sinn-fein","23":"tag-top-news","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topnews","26":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}