The Middle East, that eternal foundry of human misery, has once again erupted. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon have killed at least 17 people, and as the smoke clears, British diplomats are scrambling to push a UN ceasefire resolution through the Security Council. How predictable.
How utterly, depressingly predictable. We play the same script every decade: violence, outrage, hand-wringing, and a toothless resolution that changes nothing. It is a pantomime of impotence, staged for a global audience that has long since stopped paying attention.
The dead in Lebanon are real. Their blood is real. But the response from our Foreign Office is a ghost, a spectral gesture designed to soothe domestic consciences rather than alter the calculus of power on the ground.
The great lesson of history, from the Peloponnesian War to the fall of Rome, is that diplomacy without force is merely theatre. Our diplomats are actors, not architects. They speak of 'de-escalation' as if that word has ever meant anything in a region where tribes have been killing each other since before the Roman Empire set its first stone.
The real problem is not the violence itself, but our collective refusal to understand its roots. This is not a conflict that can be resolved by a nicely worded resolution. It is a clash of identities, of historical grievances, of civilizational pride.
The Israelis strike to preserve a sense of security; the Hezbollah factions resist to preserve a sense of honour. Both sides are trapped in a dance of mutual destruction, and we, the British, stand on the sidelines offering a ceasefire. A ceasefire is not peace.
It is a pause, a breath, a chance for the combatants to reload. If we were serious, we would impose consequences. We would cut off arms to both sides.
We would demand accountability for every dead civilian. But we will not. Because that would require a moral clarity we lack.
Instead, we cling to the illusion that the UN, that grand temple of good intentions, can legislate away hatred. It cannot. The UN is a relic of a post-war fantasy, a body that could not stop the Rwandan genocide, could not stop the Syrian massacre, and will not stop this.
The only thing that changes the calculus in the Levant is power, raw and unapologetic. The Israelis have it. The militias have some.
The British have chosen to have none. So we write resolutions. We hold press conferences.
And we pretend that a piece of paper can stop a bomb.
