The Middle East - Peace is a prize worth fighting for

Storm clouds seem to be changing colour from gunmetal grey to something much closer to black right across the Middle East.

There appears to be a worrying, accelerating momentum that could end in the kind of human tragedy and conflict not seen even in that troubled region for decades.

A particularly brutal civil war in Syria — which civil war was not? — with at least 60,000 people killed in 22 months and no end in sight; growing unrest and tension in Egypt because the promises of the Arab Spring still seem so remote; an unconfirmed air strike by Israeli forces on a supposed chemical weapons facility in Syria; an Israel determined, and understandably so, to use any means at its disposal to ensure that Syrian missiles or chemical weapons do not fall into the hands of Hezbollah; the dreaded prospect of Iran securing the weapons that would make it possible to carry out its nuclear attack threat on Israel; a more or less captive population of displaced Palestinians hemmed in on the Gaza Strip and, as if all of those tinderboxes did not represent threat enough, United Nations human rights investigators yesterday called on Israel to end settlement expansion and withdraw all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that those practices violated international law.

Unless Israel has suddenly had a change of heart and reversed one of its core policies then what they see as “settlement” and a return to their “homeland” — but what much of the world regards as ethnic cleansing exacerbated by land theft — will continue unhindered by any entity with the capability to stop it.

The tensions and hatreds this behaviour inevitably provokes will make even the prospect of a peace, or even talking about an agreed settlement, even more remote than they are already.

This is usually the point in this conversation where each of the polarised sides accuses the other of war crimes, terrorism, antisemitism, dangerous Islamic radicalism or blind, hateful Zionism.

Each side takes refuge in the tenets of its own holy book, or the universally recognised right of land ownership and the freedom to work that land. Each insists on the absolute primacy of its claims and, encouraged by their religious and national certainties, neither will contemplate compromise and so the vicious spiral continues, ensnaring generation after generation.

It may have ever been thus but history also shows that it need not be so.

A little over a century ago Europe was as divided though maybe not as violently divided as the Middle East is today. Since then a series of wars, two utterly cataclysmic, convinced Europeans that co-operation was not only possible but desirable. Surely there are enough rational, calm, sane people in the Middle East to see that and try to achieve it? The rest of the world might make its best contribution towards peace and stability in the region by identifying and supporting them. That some countries and organisations have been doing this for decades is no reason not to persist, not to hope that differences which now seem intractable may one day be resolved. The consequences of not doing so are all too predictable and horrible.