One of the longest-running protests connected to a contentious Ulster loyalist parade in Northern Ireland has been suspended.

The postponement of a three-year-old protest camp at Twaddell Avenue – a sectarian interface between the Protestant/Loyalist Greater Shankill area and Catholic/Nationalist Ardoyne – points to a possible resolution of the marching dispute.

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Since 2013 Orangemen from lodges in the Ligoniel area have been banned from returning home past the Ardoyne shops in North Belfast. The Orange lodges’ march is a feeder parade into the larger annual 12 July demonstration in the city.

Since the ban Orange Order members and their supporters have established a protest camp close to the sectarian faultline between the two areas. In a statement on Friday night, the Ballysillan Orange Order lodge said: “We are left with no option but to suspend our protest. For our lodge this has always been about securing our human rights and we thank all those who have given their time and money. The linkage of funding to this deal is of significant concern: this was about human rights not money.”

The Ballysillan Orange lodge was the only one which was not part of an aborted deal earlier in the summer between two other lodges and a nationalist residents’ group from Ardoyne that would have allowed Orangemen to return up the Crumlin Road on 1 July during battle of the Somme centenary celebrations.

The suspension of the Ballysillan lodge’s protest signals moves towards a comprehensive resolution of the last main contentious Orange march across Northern Ireland. In recent years, the flashpoint on the Crumlin Road has been a scene of rioting, sectarian clashes and serious street disorder around 12 July when Ulster loyalists remember King William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

However, Belfast is bracing itself for potential trouble breaking out of an Irish dissident republican march banned from the city centre on Sunday. The Anti-Internment League parade has been barred from entering central Belfast. Last year a standoff between dissident republicans and the Police Service of Northern Ireland resulted in rioting for several hours in North Belfast.