They Lost a Daughter

We met in the basement of the Gloria Hotel, old stones and a curved ceiling, at the end of a warm day, and there they were - two men, the one Israeli, the other Palestinian, together.
The Israeli had fought in the army but disillusioned as he'd seen his land and his comrades lost in the conflict. A graphics designer, his wife a professor. But then their 14-year-old daughter dies in a suicide bomb blast in Jerusalem. It takes him a year to find the beginning of some healing as he's encouraged to join the Parents Circle Family Forum - they've all lost a child.
He finds tonight's other speaker, the Palestinian, who spent seven years in jail for throwing a hand grenade in a demonstration. But worse was to come when an Israeli border guard shot his twelve-year-old daughter at a check-point.
They speak together of their commitment to each other, of encouraging all in this land to realise that the price we pay for violence is far too high. They end by saying they're not trying to get people to be pro-Israeli, or pro-Palestinian, but simply to recognise our common humanity, and to work for peace with justice.
There are not too many of them around, I'd say, but they symbolise for me and for all of us great hope.