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War serves no purpose, it is a spiral into destruction and despair

The circumstances in the Middle East are unique and require a more holistic approach.

Negotiations on the establishment of a Middle East war-free zone must be urgently undertaken to ensure stability in this tense and war-ravaged area.
The war in Yemen has brought economic ruin and is now turning catastrophic with millions of civilians facing agonising death due to starvation and high-tech warfare.
Does humanity need a calamitous peace after a brutal conflict that has consumed so many innocent lives and that has dislocated innocent people on a scale that defies description? The real challenge is how to reconcile the inevitable tension between the various protagonists. It was Anna Jae who said, "You are ignoring me so loud that it is deafening. The silence is so deep that it is echoing".
Current calls to negotiate a ceasefire must be a priority for the United Nations.
The circumstances in the Middle East are unique and require a more holistic approach. Success will depend largely on a multi-dimensional perspective that brings together the energies and insights of a range of state and non-state actors, not least civil society in the Middle East, where confidence and trust building is too complex and demanding a task to be seen as the preserve of political and geo-strategic calculation.
Enabling societies and polities of the region to identify areas of mistrust and misunderstanding across strategic and political, but also cultural and religious divide in order to open up possibilities of dialogue and mutual respect holds the key to creating a favourable negotiating environment.
The Middle East is so loaded with war potential and the prospects for peace are so dim that any plan for peace deserves our attention. Each side is the victim of what is convinced is the aggression of the other side.
Everyone feels deeply aggrieved at an enemy from whom he cannot escape, whom he suspects and fears, all are caught in a web of self-justification, bitterness and hatred, each side feels that force is the only language the other side will understands.
The Middle East situation is so explosive and dangerous that every stone must be overturned to see if there is a means of a just, honourable, lasting peace situation. Diplomacy is a must today and the first step in establishing it is forgetting the past, ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence to common points, which far outnumber polemical ones.
War threatens man's highest good, which is life. War makes poor people and individuals yet more miserable. War makes rich richer, creates a continuous danger of conflagration, threatens, in the case of nuclear weapons, to destroy all forms of life on the face of the earth. War is folly which does not provide the security it promises. Only global peace will save us from total and utter destruction. It was Victor Hugo who said, "Peace is the virtue of civilisation, war is its crime."
The writer is based in Johannesburg, South Africa