The shootings near the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, offers graphic proof that peace in the Middle East will remain elusive for another 20 years. Countries in these conflict zones spend billions of dollars a year on offensive armaments. The dangerous strategy of unrestricted warfare will ultimately destroy.The fierce and bloody struggle for survival erodes the veneer of civilisation and makes savages of us all.

Secret diplomacy, military superiority and political coercion seem to all be contributing to a prodigious collapse of the house of cards. When all the major combatants have exhausted the their military options, peace might become a reality. In Syria, 34 groups are fighting a brutal war for total supremacy. History has glaringly documented that there are no violent solutions to the various conflicts now engulfing the Middle East firezone. Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended. Mankind must revalidate diplomacy as the primary tool to ensure a genuine peace accord.

Continuing bloodshed would be catastrophic for all concerned. The peace process will never become a reality if force becomes an instrument of diplomacy. The current war strategy has brought two decades of destruction. Drone attacks, cluster bombs, chemical weapons and missile strikes, which are now classified as asymmetric warfare and involve indiscrimate violence against civilians on a massive scale.

When war begins, the culture of militarism encroaches on civil liberties. Continued military escalation does not bring peace or even minimal security. What it produces is mutual insecurity. The war ravaged parts of Middle East have become a land where a demoralised society struggles to survive. Despite the magnitude of the crisis, the world looks on unfazed and unconcerned.

It was during the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, that chief prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, read this profound statement: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

We ignore his message at our own peril.

- The reader is based in Benoni, South Africa.