Palestinian negotiator dedicates Remembrance Quilt

Diana Buttu, a senior advisor to the PLO's negotiations team, who was in West Belfast during this year's Féile an Phobail, was invited by Relatives for Justice to unveil the seventh panel of the organisation's Remembrance Quilt.

The unveiling took place in St Mary's Teacher Training College on the Falls Road on Wednesday 4 August.

During the ceremony, the Palestinian representative explained that having witnessed the atrocities carried out against the Palestinian people by Zionist soldiers, "it talkes a lot to make me cry".

Canadian-born Buttu recounted how her uncle was killed by an Israeli settler in 1964.

She said that her grandmother was baking a special a meal coming up to Christmas when she was told that her son had been killed by a settler who was drunk at the wheel of the vehicle. Buttu said when her father went to the scene of the incident an Israeli policeman callously dismissed the incident by telling him that 'it was one less mouth to feed'.

"My grandmother refused to cook that particular dish ever again."

What prompted the Palestinian woman's story was the panel on the quilt dedicated to 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy Brian Duffy, who was shot dead by loyalists coming up to Christmas 1993.