VISITORS to Northern Ireland need not venture far to discover that local people have strong views about another, even bloodier zone of conflict. In Catholic and Irish-nationalist parts of Belfast murals lament the sufferings of civilians in Gaza and proclaim support for hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners. In Protestant areas the Israeli flag is a common sight. One much-vandalised mural celebrates Colonel John Patterson, an Irish Protestant officer in the British army and ardent Zionist who commanded a Jewish legion in the first world war. Until a couple of years ago, a plaque in a tense part of north Belfast marked the boyhood home of Chaim Herzog, the late Israeli president whose accent recalled his native city. It was so regularly defaced that it was taken down.

However much the two situations may differ, Northern Ireland’s rival communities identify with opposing sides in the Middle East with a passion which at times seems to exacerbate their local differences.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is helping to keep Britain’s Conservatives in power, takes a staunchly pro-Israel line, hewing to the hawkish end of the Israeli spectrum. This reflects the feelings of its Protestant voters, some of whom are influenced by Christian Zionist thinking.

In a British parliamentary debate earlier this year, Ian Paisley junior, son of the DUP’s founder, argued that Israel should not be asked to dismantle settlements unilaterally. “Settlements are a symptom of the conflict in Israel; they are not the cause,” he insisted.

According to Steven Jaffe, co-chair of a lobby group called the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel, Ulster Unionists admire Israeli military prowess and what they regard as stoicism in the face of terrorism. In 2014, when the British House of Commons voted on the principle of recognising a Palestinian state, five of the 12 “no” votes came from the DUP.

Sinn Fein, the most popular party among Northern Irish Catholics, has a pro-Palestinian tradition which goes back to the 1970s when Palestinian fighters were giving active help to Irish Republican ones. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, recently took the Dublin government to task for failing to recognise the statehood of Palestine or support Palestinian hunger-strikers.

Encouragingly, relations between the two conflict zones go beyond name-calling between politicians or street artists. Ever since the 1990s, when peace agreements brought some stability to both places, there has been a steady exchange of visits involving scholars, NGOs and peace activists in search of lessons that might be transferred from one region to the other.

In June, for example, a delegation from IPCRI, a peace-minded think-tank based in Jerusalem, reported favourably on a visit to Belfast. Despite the breakdown of the power-sharing administration of Northern Ireland, the visitors were gratefully amazed that in municipal affairs, the DUP and Sinn Fein could rub along pragmatically. “We learned in Belfast that a reconciliation process is possible, albeit long and exhausting,” they reported.

Still, when storms blow up in Jerusalem, currents of turbulence reach Belfast, as an incident this summer shows. Last year, a London-based NGO called Forward Thinking managed against the odds to arrange a meeting in Belfast between members of Israel’s ruling Likud party and Sinn Fein. It was controversial: some Palestinians, especially those involved in co-ordinating an international boycott campaign, accused their Irish friends of betrayal.

Last month the NGO tried to set up a similar meeting between the two groups, but this time Sinn Fein declined. It said that, although it still believed in “critical engagement with all parties”, it would turn down the invitation as a gesture of protest against the disturbances around Jerusalem’s holy places.