A former IRA hunger-striker, who is a Sinn Féin MLA for West Belfast, is calling on the U.S. administration to play a positive role in the Israel-Palestine conflict – like it did in the Irish peace process.
Pat Sheehan says the party will raise the issue of Gaza during meetings with the U.S. administration in Washington next week.
Mr. Sheehan, who has visited Palestine on several occasions for the best part of 20 years, acknowledges that the party is facing criticism in certain quarters in Ireland for going ahead with plans to travel to the U.S. for St. Patrick’s Day events.
Mr. Sheehan criticized Western governments, including the U.S., for providing weapons to the Israelis. However, he said the U.S. played a pivotal role in the Irish peace process and should use that as a template in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“It’s my view that without American involvement we wouldn’t have had a Good Friday Agreement and it is my view that without America we wouldn’t have had a Protocol, because the Americans kept the Brits’ feet to the fire around the whole Brexit issue and the Good Friday Agreement and protecting the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.
“Whatever we think about the difficulties of the Good Friday Agreement here, the Americans see it as one of their biggest foreign policy successes in the last fifty years.
“The Palestinians aren’t going to be in Washington. In fact it’s unlikely that they are going to be in Washington any time soon. So why can’t we go and be a voice for Palestine and confront the administration?
"I know there have been meetings over the last number of days and I think Michelle [O’Neill] has met Tony Blinken [U.S. Secretary of State] and she’s also met the American ambassador to Britain and on each occasion she has raised the issue of what is happening in Palestine with both of those representatives of the U.S. government, and that will continue.
“And whoever we are meeting in the States, whether it’s Biden, whether it’s the State Department or other arms of the U.S. administration, we will be raising the issue of Palestine and we will be asking them, why don’t you play a positive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same way you did here? That was your big success, use it as a template.
““We speak to many Palestinians and many Palestinian NGOs and so on, and of all the political organisations we speak to, none of them have asked us to pull out of this trip to Washington. I know there are people who are genuinely concerned about it, who think that we shouldn’t go. But we think we can have more impact going to Washington and raising the Palestinian issue.”
