Comparison of the Middle East and Irish peace processes can be uncomfortable. In the early 1990s, when Middle Eastern leaders were being feted on the White House lawn, Irish commentators would point to the apparent resolution of that conflict as a model to follow.
Irish republicans, in particular, pleaded that if American and Israeli leaders could bring themselves to shake the hand of Yasser Arafat - for years portrayed as an arch-terrorist - then surely the same recognition could be extended to them by the British and unionists.
Now, with the evident collapse of the Oslo peace accord - underlined by Ariel Sharon's all-out assault this week on the Palestinian Authority and 400 Palestinian deaths since October - there is understandably a reluctance in Ireland to press the comparison.
However, with the three-year-old Belfast Agreement parked yet again it may well be instructive to pursue it.
The Palestinian writer Edward Said uses a phrase which resonates uncomfortably. He says what is being delivered in the Middle East is a "permanent interim agreement" in which parties appear to be engaged in a peace process but in reality nothing of fundamental importance is conceded. In other words, the peace process is simply a cover for repackaging the status quo and all its injustices.
In his latest book, The End of the Peace Process, Said writes: "So noble an idea as `peace' has become a corrupted embellishment of power masquerading as reconciliation."
Certainly, before the latest intifada Palestinians saw no evidence of reconciliation from Israel even though the Western media trumpeted "generous concessions" offered by former prime minister Ehud Barak.
Up to five million Palestinian refugees languish in camps in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon with no prospect of returning to their homeland
while those living in the supposedly autonomous West Bank and Gaza are strangers in their own land. The territories are both surrounded and cut through by Israeli areas and passing from one section to another requires permission.
Even before the latest blockade and eventual reinvasion this week of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel had control of water supplies, transport and security. For most Palestinians, social and economic conditions had already drastically deteriorated since the Oslo peace accord in 1993.
Instead of restoring territory taken in 1948 during the setting up of the Israeli state and again during the Six Day War in 1967, entire Palestinian communities have been bulldozed to make way for new Israeli settlements to accommodate Jewish immigrants from the US, Ethiopia and Russia.
What has made deciphering the Middle East peace process problematic is the widely held assumption in the Western media that the US, the principal power in the region, is an honest broker between two factions.
This naive assumption overlooks the historic role of Israel as the West's client state, offering stability in a geopolitically vital oil-rich region. The former imperial power, Britain, first contracted out this role in the 1920s. By implementing the notorious Balfour Declaration, Britain reneged on its commitment to a Palestinian homeland and allowed the arbitrary and unjust partition of territory for a Zionist state.
The reprehensible treatment of Palestinians continued under US tutelage when it took over as the principal power following the second World War.
But eventually the situation became unsustainable, with Washington's Israeli client, having acquired an international image that was beyond the pale, guilty of violating dozens of UN resolutions over occupied territory and routinely singled out for opprobrium from human rights monitors.
Enter the dissembling peace process, ostensibly offering "historic settlement" but in reality delivering negligible change. This follows from the priority of the US and Israel being geopolitical control, not justice.
Said, and a growing number of Palestinians, accuse Arafat and his Fatah leadership of buying into "symbolism and cronyism" and of giving legitimacy to a fake settlement. He warns that peace will always elude the Middle East so long as fundamental rights of Palestinians are ignored: primarily the right of return with compensation and the right to a self-determined Palestinian state.
For this to happen, however, there must be an absolute admission of the historical injustice committed by Israel and its patrons, the US and Britain. In other words, platitudes and expediency can never substitute for truth and justice.
The implications for the Irish peace process are grave. As with the US and Israel, Britain has allowed unionists to dictate the agenda and pace of never-ending negotiations. David Trimble is permitted to defy the law by barring Sinn Fein ministers from cross-Border meetings.
And now the entire political process is held hostage in Westminster elections that will not take place before June, which will dovetail nicely with the Orange marching fiasco.
Meanwhile, the issue of British partition of Ireland - a violation of international norms - and the denial of national self-determination have been papered over with a flimsy, convoluted peace accord. Like the Oslo peace accord, the ambiguity of this document is used as a means of repackaging and stabilising the status quo to serve British geopolitical interests.
These include making the island of Ireland "safe" for British and closely aligned American capital and curbing a truly progressive democratic development that might come with a genuinely independent Ireland.
But we should have learned by now that permanent interim arrangements, as the Belfast Agreement also now increasingly appears to be, only postpone instability and conflict.
Sometimes it really is a case of ripping up and starting again.
Finian Cunningham is a Dublin journalist