The IRA Playbook for Gaza: Can Yesterday’s Peace Process Solve Tomorrow’s War?

As Washington contemplates applying Northern Ireland’s disarmament model to Hamas, the ghosts of past peace processes collide with the realities of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

The Northern Ireland Template

The reported U.S. proposal to disarm Hamas through a gradual, supervised process explicitly draws from one of modern history’s most celebrated conflict resolutions: the decommissioning of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Between 1998 and 2005, the IRA systematically destroyed its weapons arsenal under international supervision, marking the effective end of The Troubles that had plagued Northern Ireland for decades. The process was painstaking, often frustrating, and required extraordinary political courage from all sides—but ultimately, it worked.

Now, American negotiators are apparently considering whether this model could be transplanted to Gaza. The appeal is obvious: rather than demanding immediate and total disarmament—a non-starter for any armed group—the approach would allow Hamas to maintain face while gradually transitioning from a military to a purely political organization. With Turkey and Qatar reportedly backing the plan, it represents a potential middle path between Israel’s demands for Hamas’s complete elimination and the international community’s recognition that some form of Palestinian governance structure must emerge from the current conflict’s ashes.

The Devil in the Details

Yet the differences between Belfast and Gaza are as striking as any similarities. The IRA operated within a democratic framework where Sinn Féin, its political wing, could pursue its goals through electoral politics. Hamas, by contrast, has governed Gaza as a de facto one-party state since 2007, with its military and political wings deeply intertwined. More fundamentally, the Good Friday Agreement was built on a foundation of mutual exhaustion and a shared recognition that military victory was impossible for either side.

Israel’s reported skepticism reflects these realities. The fear in Jerusalem is not merely that Hamas might cheat—hiding weapons or rearming through its extensive tunnel networks—but that the very premise of the comparison is flawed. The IRA’s goal was a united Ireland, achievable through democratic means. Hamas’s charter, even in its softened 2017 version, envisions a Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a maximalist position that leaves little room for the compromise that made Northern Ireland’s peace possible.

The Trump Factor

The reported December 29 meeting between Netanyahu and Trump adds another layer of complexity. Trump’s first-term approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was marked by bold gestures—moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights—that delighted Israel while alienating Palestinians. A second Trump term might see similar decisiveness, but in which direction? The president-elect’s transactional worldview and desire for headline-grabbing deals could make him amenable to creative solutions, or it could lead him to support Israel’s preference for a military solution that leaves no room for Hamas in any form.

Lessons from History

History offers sobering lessons about the transferability of peace processes. The Oslo Accords attempted to import elements of other successful negotiations but foundered on the specifics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. tried to apply its nation-building playbook from Germany and Japan to Iraq and Afghanistan, with disastrous results. Each conflict has its own logic, its own red lines, its own possibilities for resolution.

Yet history also teaches that the most intractable conflicts often end through processes that once seemed impossible. Who in 1990 would have predicted that Nelson Mandela would soon be working with F.W. de Klerk to dismantle apartheid? Who in 1995 would have imagined former IRA commanders sitting in Stormont as government ministers?

The question facing policymakers is not whether the Northern Ireland model can be perfectly replicated in Gaza—it cannot. Rather, it’s whether the core insight of that process—that armed groups can be peacefully transitioned into political actors through patient, supervised disarmament—contains lessons applicable to this conflict. As negotiators prepare for what could be pivotal discussions, they must grapple with a fundamental tension: Is Hamas more like the IRA of the 1990s, exhausted and ready for politics, or is it something fundamentally different—an organization whose military and ideological commitments make such a transformation impossible?