The international community has once again called for immediate de-escalation in the Middle East, that sacred diplomatic ritual in which powerful nations gather to announce that terrible things are, indeed, terrible. At the United Nations, officials deliver solemn speeches, demand restraint and express their famous "deep concern", a phrase that has survived decades of warfare without ever appearing to inconvenience a single missile. Meanwhile, governments involved in the conflict continue weighing military options, apparently unaware that someone in New York has issued a particularly serious statement.
It is a fascinating spectacle: global politics behaving like an anxious parent, wagging a finger from the sidelines while the children have already set the entire playground on fire and started arguing over who owns the ashes. Every escalation produces another emergency meeting, another photograph of worried diplomats and another promise that the international community will not stand idly by. It will, of course, sit instead. Preferably around an expensive conference table.
The civilians caught in the violence have considerably less time for diplomatic theatre. And somewhere in a beautifully furnished UN office, another official is preparing the ultimate weapon of international diplomacy: a strongly worded paragraph expressing concern about the previous strongly worded paragraph.