“A week is a long time in politics,” I was once told. as efforts continue to shape a possible peace framework for Gaza and Ukraine, I find myself returning to the Northern Ireland peace process not for simple parallels, but for what it reveals about the practical demands of negotiating in deeply entrenched conflicts.
Recently, shuttle diplomacy involving US peace envoy Jared Kushner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas representatives underscores how fragile and complex such efforts remain. Beneath the headlines lies a more enduring question that I ask myself: what sustains dialogue when trust has broken down?
Northern Ireland offers one of the clearest answers.
The Good Friday Agreement did not emerge from a single breakthrough, but from a sustained process involving George Mitchell and the Irish and British leaders Albert Reynolds, John Major, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair. Progress depended less on early consensus than on maintaining a structured process long enough for conditions to evolve and limited trust to take root.
The essential capability was not ideological alignment, but disciplined engagement: emotional restraint, attentive listening and the capacity to understand opposing motivations without endorsing them. A book I continue to reread and lend to clients is a small book by Chris Voss, the former FBI negotiator. He calls it his “tactical empathy”, prioritising understanding under pressure.
That same challenge is evident in Gaza today. While the context differs and the stakes are higher, the underlying problem is familiar: how to sustain dialogue amid deep and mutual distrust.
Northern Ireland demonstrates that peace processes advance less through isolated moments of agreement than through the integrity of the negotiation framework itself. What matters is not immediate resolution, but the ability to keep structured dialogue alive long enough for possibilities to emerge.
The lesson is therefore methodological rather than hopeful: effective and ongoing peace negotiations depend on understanding over persuasion, and continuity over episodic breakthroughs. In short, no one leave the room until an understanding is achieved and built upon, slowly and carefully.
Ultimately, the defining discipline in such contexts is the willingness to keep talking when silence would be easier.
A final thought: when the head of MI6 emerges from the shadows to speak publicly, every word matters. Blaise Metreweli’s warning is stark: Britain and its allies are no longer living comfortably in peacetime, but operating in the dangerous space between peace and war.
The modern battlefield is everywhere: Ukraine, cyberspace, critical infrastructure, the seabed and, increasingly, our own minds. Russia’s sabotage and disinformation, China’s technological power and the rapid development of AI are rewriting the rules of conflict.
