Belfast City Councillor Shares Insights on Northern Irish Peace Process With Palestinian Legislative Council

At a time where the prospect of escalating violence remains firmly in place within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Forward Thinking asked Donal Lyons, Belfast City Councillor, to share insights from the Northern Irish Peace Process.In the Northern Irish context, he said that it was important to recognise the ‘futility of violence’ and  ‘keeping political dialogue and hope alive opens the door to a durable and sustainable political solution’. Indeed,  ‘without dialogue and hope we will have had no path to a just and lasting peace, no end to the suffering and no courage to create our own future’.Dialogue ‘showed to Northern Ireland and the world that a new beginning is always possible, that new ways of life could come from the collision of ideas from within the political process, rather than from the rattle of gunfire or the shouts of factional loyalty’.The video was shown during a Palestinian Legislative Council session held in Gaza on the 13th May 2018.https://youtu.be/VA6tys2AZ3o