Our planet progresses, if at all, through decency and dignity. We advance, if at all, through trade, shared knowledge and co-operation. International collaboration requires mutual political understanding. Give and take. Diplomacy, in short.

Right now, our world’s political and diplomatic structures are palpably falling short. Parts of the planet experience persistent poverty. Our economies have yet to recover post pandemic. We talk endlessly of climate change but the solutions seem stuck, difficult to implement. And we are unwilling witnesses to brutal conflict.

In Ukraine. And in the Middle East – where every diplomatic endeavour is thwarted. Little wonder that, when the topic of Israel, Gaza and Lebanon was discussed by the BBC Question Time panel in Dundee on Thursday, there was a discernible atmosphere of dismay, of hopelessness.

The panel and the audience tried. They talked of an arms embargo, of other political pressure, of potential solutions. But the tone was one of whimpering in the face of enduring conflict. They might as well have cited Wilfred Owen, the World War I poet, who exclaimed: “What made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth’s sleep at all.”

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So is diplomacy completely useless in the Middle East? For now, perhaps. But it too must endure. We must try, endlessly, to exert what influence we have in the pursuit of peace. On the Palestinian side, that largely means other Islamic countries in the region.

Qatar in particular has striven for compromise. They, along with Saudi Arabia and UAE, were among the signatories of a US-led endeavour to secure a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah........

© Herald Scotland