Israelis, Arabs find peace in Ireland

Roni Segoly served in the Israeli Secret Service for 25 years before deciding to take a “different path.”

Last week, in County Donegal, after hearing a Palestinian woman talk about how she was hours away from a suicide-bombing mission, Segoly said he could “barely keep myself from crying.”  

The Palestinian woman, Shifa Alqudsi, had told her daughter the night before the mission that she should soon look in the sky for a star when she wanted to speak to her mother.

(Her mission was prevented because of an informer. She spent six years in an Israeli jail.)

“She was so close to despair because of the situation the Palestinians were in,” Segoly explained to IrishCentral over the phone from Israel. “But when we were in Ireland, she was always laughing and talking. If a person can go through such an experience and come out that way, it gives you hope.”

They also heard from an Israeli soldier, who told the Palestinians about how he once took part in an operation in which several Palestinian policemen were killed.

These were just some of the stories told last week at a peace center, called An Teach Ban — the White House — in Downings, Donegal,  when the most unlikely of meetings took place: 15 former Palestinian militants and 15 former members of the Israeli defense forces.

The two sides were in Northern Ireland to talk to each other and to learn the lessons from the Northern Ireland experience.

According to Paddy Logue, the co-ordinator at the peace center, the trip was partly funded by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. One of the highlights of the trip, said Logue, was a visit to Derry, where the group got a tour of the city's famous walls - which has an Israeli flag on Fountain Street, and a Palestinian flag at Free Derry Wall - as well as the Bogside District, the site of famous riots during the early days of the Troubles.

The trip was organized by Combatants for Peace, an organization whose Web site says, “After brandishing weapons for so many years, and having seen one another only through weapon sights, we have decided to put down our guns, and to fight for peace.”

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Nster.com