The President, Mary McAleese, has called for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement to the fighting between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza.
Mrs McAleese said ‘the dynamics’ of the peace process in Northern Ireland ‘were very transferable’ to the situation in Gaza.
Speaking in Buckinghamshire where she was opening an Irish centre, the first to be built in Britain for 22 years, the President said conflict could only be ended through political dialogue.
‘If your conflict is on the street you are never ever going to resolve your problems on the street. If you've got a political ambition for freedom, the only place it'll be resolved is around the negotiating table. That's the message for Gaza and the relationship between Israel and Palestine,’ Mrs McAleese said.
There has been international support for the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas following the ousting of his Fatah movement from Gaza by the Islamist organisation Hamas.
Officials from the Quartet of Middle East Peace Mediators, The United Nations, the United States, the EU and Russia have pledged support for Mr Abbas.
The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said it would be wrong for Hamas to reap the benefits from what she termed a coup d’état in Gaza.
