Students from Dublin, Dundalk, Belfast and Jerusalem were welcomed to the Mansion House yesterday at the end of a week-long project to get young people thinking about questions of conflict and universal values.
The Schools across Borders initiative, which is funded by Irish Aid, brought 12 Israeli 16-year-olds to Ireland this week to exchange ideas with their Irish peers. Programme manager Darran Irvine said the aim was to hear young people's voices and to get them thinking about different experiences of conflict in the Middle East and Northern Ireland.
Without making too much of the similarities between the two experiences, Mr Irvine said the Israeli students felt they could relate in some way to their peers in Belfast.
Since the project was established in 2002, Mr Irvine and his team have been visiting Irish schools to tell students about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The students watch videos that Israeli and Palestinian students have made about themselves and their situations, then make a video of their own in response.
These Irish videos are then used in the Israeli and Palestinian schools to provoke discussion and debate - and so the process continues from year to year.
Andrea Korman, a schoolteacher in Jerusalem, said: "A project like this is so important because it keeps the hope going."
