In response to several days of dreadful atrocities in Israel and Gaza, and the potential for events to escalate into a long and bitter war, world leaders have been struggling to find words that might calm the situation and give space for resolutions to be sought.

Unfortunately, the correct words are difficult to find, as in many respects words have been at the heart of this tragedy for centuries. Even common terms like ‘conflict’, ‘occupation’, ‘country’ and ‘defence’ have particular, contrary and often inflammatory meanings when it comes to this particular conflagration.

Take ‘Palestine’ for instance. We talk about Palestine as a place, as a nation and as a distinct people. In most modern references it refers to an area of the eastern Mediterranean comprising parts of modern Israel and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The name derives from the Greek Philistia (as in the area occupied in the 12th century by the Philistines, who it is thought came from Crete to occupy a small pocket of coastal land between modern-day Tel-Aviv and Gaza.

The boundaries and political status of Palestine shifted constantly over the subsequent millennia, and it wasn’t until the aftermath of the First World War that the possibility emerged of a geographically and politically defined Palestinian nation. Decades of conflict and dispute followed and in November 1988 the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat, finally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Palestine. Although Palestine is a now a member of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the G77, the International Olympic Committee, as well as UNESCO, UNCTAD and the International Criminal Court, the all-important recognition of the State of Palestine by the United Nations is still frustratingly out of reach. Currently 138 of the 193 UN member states have recognised it, but the list doesn’t include major global players such as France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the USA.

In particular, in 2011 US President Obama declared his outright opposition and said the US would veto any United Nations Security Council move to recognise Palestinian statehood. Donald Trump and joe Biden have expressed the same view.

Here in the UK British political attitudes to the Israel/Palestine issue have been less than commendable. The British government recognised the State of Israel in 1950, but very deliberately failed to define its borders or its capital. Since then the UK government has also acknowledged the general rights of the Palestinian people to a homeland, and has been committed to the notion of a ‘two state’ solution to the division of territories, but has refused to acknowledged its statehood.

It’s rather like President Obama said in a September 2011 speech to the UN General Assembly: “Genuine peace can only be realised between Israelis and Palestinians themselves  … ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach an agreement on the issues that divide them”.

In simple terms – we’re not getting involved, it’s up to you guys to slug it out, but we’ll happily endorse whoever comes out on top.

Whilst successive Tory governments have pretty much mirrored the Obama line, the political left in Britain has tended to support the Palestinian cause, to the extent that during the 1970s and 80s Labour got all this dreadfully confused with darker undercurrents of dubious nationalism and support for terrorist organisations, creating pockets of antisemitism that have recently resurfaced to haunt the party.

Sadly, whilst legislators have procrastinated, a globally sanctioned and formally recognised Israel has been able to make relentless incursions into the unrecognised State of Palestine, resulting in forced displacements of the population, civilian plantation, military occupation and a state of life for Palestinians that has all the hallmarks of apartheid life under martial law.

Given the international uproar that broke out after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the spontaneous global support for its oppressed citizens, it’s little surprise that Palestinians have been wondering why the world has been ignoring their plight for so long.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the Palestinian cause is coloured by a deep-seated and ancient religious phobia – Putin’s Russia and the remembered threat of communism is one thing, but the long buried collective memory of Muslim hoards clambering at the gates of Western democracy is another entirely. Thus last weekend’s terrible killings by Hamas militia is not just another massacre in an escalating battle over local national recognition and denial, but a potential portent of what could happen much further afield.

As Hamas states in its founding charter: “there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time.”

Any organisation that eschews dialogue and only sees the resolution of conflict through the annihilation of its opposition presents a frightening existential conflict to democracy. When – like Hamas – it is well-funded, well armed and more than capable of sustaining a prolonged and bloody conflict, and it’s primary motivation is to create as much outrage and terror as possible, it’s far too late for governments to suddenly wake up and start talking about bringing people to the negotiating table.

Like most wars, the present escalation of conflict over Palestine has the capacity to spill into a much larger catastrophe. The terrorist group Hezbollah that controls neighbouring southern Lebanon wants escalation and Iran would certainly see a prolonged war as weakening its bitter enemy, Israel. As Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said just this morning: “We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime.”

Unfortunately, a state of war also favours the two main protagonists – for Israel it delivers the right to crush the Palestinian people once and for all, whilst for the Palestinians such action would justify their own militarism and resistance.

Under such circumstances it’s probably far too late to talk any further about a ‘two state’ solution to this particular inability of human beings to live together harmoniously – and the potential threat to global peace and stability is such that you also can’t take the Obama route of letting the war go where it will and simply hope to sweep in at the end in support of the victor.

Given that religion and religious differences lie at the core of the Middle East problem, perhaps some lessons could be learnt from other parts of the world where religious conflicts have been resolved. We all know for instance that for decades it was thought that no solution could ever be found to the northern Ireland problem – where British inaction and error had enabled religious divisions and prejudices to become so deeply engrained that an endless state of war seemed immoveable.

Whilst negotiations and the much lauded Good Friday Agreement played its part in breaking that tragic cycle, it was economics not negotiations that finally dragged northern Ireland out of its relentless state of self-destruction.

I was once told rather flippantly by a prominent northern Irish politician that “if youngsters can pick up a house and a BMW they won’t pick up an Armalite.” It sounded rather crass at the time but now I think there was some truth in it. Economic and societal prosperity is the best and most lasting antidote to any military conflict, as almost all are born out of deprivation, exclusion and poverty.

That’s why the only meaningful way forward in the Middle East conflict may be to forget the doomed two state solution – and even any talk of ‘conflict resolution’ – and start exploring incremental alternatives focussed on improving people’s lives across the divide. Gaza and the West Bank would be good start points – where investment and development would help end years of isolation, deprivation and resentment. Yes, it might also benefit Hamas, but they’re pretty entrenched anyway and improving their lives too might just change things for the better.

Giving Palestine international recognition would also change the balance of power and influence fundamentally, as well as opening up the region to economic development, and that could be achieved without firing a shot. And even if the protagonists were still determined to fight it out, doing so under the shadow of a UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, human rights instruments and commercial peace incentives would make such a course difficult, pointless and hopefully impossible to sustain.

If nothing else, the dreadful images we’ve seen this week from the Gaza region bear tragic testament to an absolute failure of legislators around the globe to engage meaningfully over the past decades with this problem, and to work towards solutions. Britain and other objectors should have recognised a Palestinian state long ago, while it was still possible to bring people to the negotiating table. Having missed that opportunity, the only way forward now is to move beyond politics and into the arena of recognising and developing human dignity for all.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic publisher and theologian