Mark Greene from LICC comments

Mark Greene

As BBC News reported rockets from Gaza and salvos from Israel, BBC2's hauntingly brilliant The Honourable Woman compellingly explored the question of how someone, any of us, might somehow cease to be a contributor to an intractable problem and become part of the solution.

For Nessa Stein, the honourable British businesswoman in question, it was to set aside revenge for her father's murder and build communications between Palestinians and Israelis, opening up the web to Palestinians and sponsoring joint education institutions. Noble projects which the powers that be - Palestinian, Israeli, American and British - seek to twist to their own advantage. Inevitably perhaps, the good queen - kidnapped, beaten, raped, bereaved - becomes an unwitting pawn in a murderous gambit.

And yet, she could not but choose to seek a path to peace.

In the end, as Amos Oz, Israel's premier novelist, pointed out in How to Cure a Fanatic, everyone knows there is only one viable solution - two independent sovereign states with less land than either would like, and less security than would make either feel really safe. This is a solution that Israel can countenance but that Hamas, who are not beloved of many Arab regimes, will not. Hamas' avowed goal is the destruction of Israel which is why they were entirely content to shoot rockets into Israel whatever the cost to their own people.

Israel's choices are limited: to allow Hamas to fire rockets, dig tunnels and raid settlements, or what? Which government in the world can long stay in power if it will not defend its citizens from military attack? Yet, as the terrible pictures of injured Gazan children filled our newspapers, Israel was steadily losing the so-called moral high ground, if any such terrain still exists in the region. It is a result which very much suits Hamas, as does the current ceasefire which leaves Israel a long way from the security guarantees they seek. It's hard to imagine that this tinderbox will not ignite again.

And yet, what choice have we but to seek a better way?

And so we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not taking sides with Israelis or Palestinians, but taking sides with the peacemakers on both sides, for as Jesus told us in Matthew 5:9, 'Blessed are the peacemakers', and, sadly, prophetically, realistically, in verse 10, that persecution may well visit those who seek righteousness.

And yet what choice have we?