Fundamental misunderstanding of how PIRA was defeated and pushed towards the political talks.
@Cincills said: "The power of the IRA in Northern Ireland was diminished by political negotiation."
Wrong! The power of the PIRA was diminished by the efforts of the security forces. They were inflitrated up to leadership positions which meant the SAS could obtain good intelligence in order to be ready to ambush PIRA when they attacked. Loughgall 1987 is an excellent example of that and the beginning of the end for PIRA. That's because PIRAs most efficient, committed and deadliest terrorist cell was completely wiped out by the SAS.
The UK and American Governments disrupted and then destroyed PIRAs arms smuggling from the USA. The French helped intercept some shipments from Gaddafi's Libya too. The Irish navy intercepted a shipment of weapons from the USA as well.
The Bush administration was a huge help in forcing PIRA to begin decommissioning weapons in the wake of 9/11. The "War On Terror" was about to start and PIRA would come off really badly if they restarted. Colombia caught PIRA training FARC in their country too.
But the key was intelligence which meant PIRA could no longer operate freely or have the confidence to survive terrorist attacks. In fact, here's the admissions from some key PIRA members on this aspect.
"We were saying the armed struggle’s failed, it can’t win. The jails are filling up, people are dying left, right and centre and the British are getting the better hand on us.
Obviously we knew in our hearts that we were deeply, deeply infiltrated at a very high level.
“The armed struggle had to stop. We’d dump weapons, call the ceasefire, and then go into talks."
- Frankie Quinn, senior member of the PIRA's East Tyrone brigade, one of the deadliest of PIRAs cells.
"The attrition rate was just so appalling.
The SAS, the British intelligence services were obviously in a position to intercept most operations.
It was absolutely clear that we were losing if we hadn’t already lost the war and that it was time to cash in the chips.”
IRA director of intelligence Kieran Conway
"It was a defeat for the Republican Movement, a complete military and ideological defeat across the board that opened up career paths for certain members of the leadership, but left us ideologically destroyed."
- John Crawley, former US Marine Corps special forces unit known as Recon, set up a PIRA transatlantic gun running operation with the help of US Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger & author of 'The Yank: My Life as a former US Marine in the IRA'
There's more than this, but I think this is enough to show that PIRA was defeated from the inside out and other ways.
Whilst there are still terrorist groups in Northern Ireland today, this is not what it appears to be either.
Although Loyalist terrorists are still on the proscribed terrorist groups list of the UK Government, in practice they're more like a criminal gang dealing drugs. They are investigated by the PSNI Paramilitary Crime Taskforce which deals with that kind of thing.
That leaves the Republicans. PIRA members are still monitored by the PSNI Terrorism Unit as is the New IRA. The reality is NIRA are not very good at what they do, are infiltrated and MI5 based near Belfast has them down. In fact, NIRA admit their terrorism is so ineffective and insignificant that they say its simply "symbolic"!
"We fully accept we cannot defeat the British militarily, or even drive them from Ireland, but we will continue to fight for as long as they remain here. The attacks are symbolic. They are propaganda." - New IRA statement
So, my argument still stands - its not possible to achieve a political settlement until or unless a terrorist group is defeated.
Again, you're making a false equivalence between* *the Northern Ireland conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian one.
You have to understand that the British Government viewed and still view Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. Does Israel consider Gaza to be an integral part of Israel?
PIRA was never able to carry out sustained terrorist attacks on England at any point. Their attacks were sporadic with most of them foiled, e.g. PIRAs John Crawley and his team were arrested before they could bomb electricity installations in south-east England around 1996.
In nearly four decades of terrorism, PIRA murdered approximately 1,800 people.
Compare and contrast that with the fact Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people – mostly civilians, including children - on 7th October 2023.
In ONE day Hamas* *murdered almost as many people than PIRA did in three decades!
So, why exactly would the UK have ever needed to bomb, blockade or cut supplies to Northern Ireland for?
I don't think you understand the differences between the two conflicts, their scales or that defeat is necessary before a political settlement can be realised.
To answer your last question, it is a brutal, tough reality to face that it's NOT possible to defeat Hamas without civilian deaths, including children. That is down to the nature of Hamas - they use Palestinian civilians as human shields and children as child soldiers!
In fact, according to the UnitedNations, the Palestinian Authority also use children as soldiers.
See attachment.
Now you have this knowledge....how would you deal with this problem?