Léargas

It is unusual for this column to deal with the same issue three weeks in a row. But the Israeli assault on Gaza makes this a very special case. The scenes of desolation and destruction, of whole streets reduced to piles of broken rubble, and the images of torn bodies, especially of young children and babies, demand that the international community do all that we can to end this slaughter. Just before noon on Tuesday morning I spoke to Saeb Erekat in Ramallah on the west Bank. The Palestinian Unity Government was holding an emergency meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation. Saeb is an Executive Committee Member of the PLO and is the Chief Negotiator for the Palestinian government. He took a few minutes to brief me on the current situation in Gaza and the behind the scenes efforts to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire. He explained that the Palestinian government, including Hamas, had accepted a United States proposal for a 24 hour humanitarian ceasefire. The Israeli go...

August 1969 was a tipping point in the history of the north. Sectarian pogroms, a feature of nineteenth century Belfast and partition, returned to the streets of Belfast with hundreds of families in Ardoyne, the lower Falls and the Clonard area being forcibly evicted from their homes. Loyalist mobs led by the RUC and B Specials attacked Catholic homes. Filmed sequences from the period show families scrambling desperately to save belongings as they abandoned their homes with flames billowing behind them and smoke rising into the air. Whole streets of terraced homes, local businesses and mills were destroyed. The refugees carried their children, bundles of clothes and small pieces of furniture in their arms or on their backs while larger pieces were left abandoned in the street or piled onto to flat bed lorries to be carried off. The streets of the Falls Road and Ardoyne were a war zone.   It was a terrifying time. In the three days between August 14 and 16 eight people wer...

      Protest against Israeli assault on Gaza: Belfast   The Israeli assault on Gaza has killed 200 people. Most of whom are civilians and children. Thousands more have been forced to flee their homes under threat from the Israeli government. The short ceasefire announced for this morning is a welcome development.   However it will only be another temporary lull in the cyclical violence in that region unless a real and inclusive dialogue takes place involving all of the combatant groups, including Hamas, and if the core issues of statehood for the Palestinian people, an end to the Israeli theft of Palestinian land and water rights, and the lifting of the siege of Gaza are not agreed. Below are some thoughts on the situation: Imagine that the population of the north was squeezed into an area half that of County Louth, the smallest county on the island of Ireland. Imagine that 1.8 million people are locked into a piece of land th...

      With the intensive all-party talks less than 48 hours old the Unionist parties all walked out. The reason? The Parades Commission has barred an Orange march from returning along part of the Crumlin Road through a nationalist area. The DUP leader Peter Robinson and Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt were then joined by the leader of the TUV (Traditional Unionist Voice) Jim Allister and by the parties linked to the UVF and UDA in issuing a joint call to action for loyalists to oppose the Parades Commission’s determination and describing the all-party talks as ‘fruitless’. The unionist leaderships urged loyalists to respond peacefully and lawfully but given that their decision is in direct opposition to a lawful decision by the Parades Commission, it is questionable how much weight will be given to this by those loyalist elements that have been periodically involved in serious street disturbances in the last two years. Many will also question the...