A few hundred Worcester people marched through the city centre on Friday afternoon to demonstrate their concern at the developments at the end of the week culminating in the ground operations by Israel which mark a very worrying deterioration in the situation in Gaza.

The real trouble here is that in their attempts to eliminate the terrorist threat on their doorstep, Israel are causing civilian damage as well.

It really is an awful situation and it is somewhat ironic that as we are about to start a period of commemoration of 100 years since the beginning of the First World War, we are still reaping the whirlwind. For a lot of the problems in the Middle East, here in Palestine and elsewhere, in Iran and Iraq, have their roots in that conflict a century ago – and the way in which the victorious countries dealt with the area, in 1919 and again in 1947.

For this simple reason it is entirely wrong of people to say that this conflict has nothing to do with us. It does have something to do with us because we are historically tied to it.

It also demoinstrates the significance of marking the centennial because we would like to think we have progressed so far in the last century that we are more humanitarian, more keen to resolve disputes than to fight them, more internationally cohesive than ever before, more interdependent across the world.

Unfortunately events in Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Syria, the Crimea, and in the Ukraine show that the situation in Palestine is not the only area where military action, by states and by independent and terrorist groups threatens peace and stability and wreaks havoc and despair amongst the majority civilian population.

It is unfortunate that the brokers of a ceasefire, Egypt, appear to either have their own agenda or are seen to have their own agenda. The UN has called for restraint by Israel and the US has urged a return to the 2012 ceasefire. This HAS to be the right course. The only agenda there can be for the whole region is a cessation of these hostilities.

As one learned journalist has written recently, about the ongoing conflict:: Never once have they improved the situation of either side. Neither can damage the other sufficiently to change the balance of power between them. No action that either can muster can be punitive enough to change the behaviour of the other.

I hope that the people of Worcester and its politicians and leaders can send back this message to David Cameron and the Foreign Secretary, as will many other towns and cities in this country, for them to work with the United Nations to seek a ceasefire and to continue to work not for a solution – it is unlikely there is any real solution – but at least to work for resolution which allows neighbours to live side by side without resorting to such destructive activity.

Adrian Gregson

Worcester