They say that two things in life are certain: death and taxes.

But there’s a third we’d kind of forgotten about. That’s the conflict in the Middle East, the one that we’ve all got an opinion on, the great dividing line in the sands of our time.

Other conflicts come and go, but this one keeps coming back in bloody waves.

Not so many people knew much about Ukraine before the overnight trend of turning social media bios yellow and blue.

But deep down, we’ve all got a side in the Palestinian conflict. It’s a fight that’s been ever present in our lives.

Whether we grew up in Magheraveely or Monaghan, most of us walked the roads of Galilee in our childhood.

We’ve all spent a wee bit of Christmas in Bethlehem – regardless of whether it’s a Catholic donkey or a Protestant donkey at the manger.

Muslims, too, have their stories of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, with different names.

That’s why we call such a place ‘The Holy Land’.

But there’s nothing holy about that region right now. It’s been a mess for a century, and a mess of Europe’s making.

The idea of creating a homeland for Jews actually began with Napoleon; a notion later adopted by the British.

That gathered speed after the slaughter of the Second World War. The things that happened in the decades after have been well documented, and equally well disputed on both sides.

It’d take a thousand Impartial Reporters, and not just a thousand words, to even get anywhere close to covering the complexities of this conflict.

That’s not what this article’s about.

It’s about the need for peace – a word that used to be as popular in the 1990s as the blue ’n’ yellow flags of today.

Then, we seemed set for what was called ‘the end of history’.

Opposing sides brought down walls of division in Germany and South Africa. Painstakingly, a jigsaw of peace got put together in Northern Ireland with American assistance.

The Americans attempted the same in the Middle East. And for a time, that seemed to work.

Then trouble erupted again, largely because there was no real peace dividend for the Palestinians. They still lived under de facto occupation.

The unholy cycle of violence has never stalled in this tragic land. It’s a far cry from childhood Bible stories and Christmas hymns.

I don’t remember baby Jesus being kept awake by bombs falling out of the night sky.

But that has been the 24/7 existence for so many Palestinian children over these past few decades.

And there’s no justification for killing, maiming and terrifying children. Not even if, as is probable, somebody has stored rockets under the baby’s manger.

The children of Palestine are not responsible for this war. But they are often the victims.

So too are the children of Israel, but to a far lesser extent.

And unless something is done, that cycle is going to continue into another generation. Terrifyingly too, the longer this goes on, the more extreme everything becomes.

Supposing Israel destroys Hamas and levels the Gaza Strip – what then?

Something worse would probably come along a generation from now, even if there’s very little worse that can be imagined than what was done last weekend.

Young people were slaughtered at a rave. The bodies of the dead got paraded in the streets, referred to on social media as “settler rats”.

On the other side of the information war, the Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has openly referred to the population of Gaza as “human animals” deserving of a siege.

Joe Brolly, on Twitter, has pointed out that “this is how Adolf Hitler described the Jewish people”.

That kind of language is proof of another warning from history.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886).

It is possible to support Palestinian rights at the same time as condemning Hamas and having sympathy for Israel’s position too.

Last weekend’s incursion echoed the darkest fears in the Israeli psyche. I’ve heard those voiced first-hand.

Teaching English overseas about 20 years ago, in Japan, I lived in the same house as a group of young Israelis travelling the world after National Service.

One of the boys said that we, Europeans, hate what they do to the Palestinians. But he argued that if they don’t defend themselves, they could get wiped out and driven into the sea by hostile neighbours.

There’s a paranoia at the heart of that. And it’s understandable, in parts, but also potentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If Israel doesn’t make peace with its Arab neighbours, it’s going to condemn itself to an almost permanent state of paranoia. And war.

If the Israeli state pushes every Arab out of Gaza, they’re just pushing the problem back, not solving it.

And if they enact a genocide, which even Benjamin Netanyahu surely wouldn’t dream of, they’ll spark fires of hostility that will burn for generations.

That’s why peace is needed – not war, weapons or military aid.

It’s not often that Joe Brolly gets quoted on the same side of history as Lords and Ladies, but demands for an end to war are coming from all sides.

Former Unionist MP John Taylor, now Lord John Kilclooney, has long since been an advocate for Palestinian rights, and has spoken out about “indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza”.

Meanwhile, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, former Chair of the Conservative Party, has spoken of the lives that have been senselessly lost “because the world has failed in bringing about two States” promised in earlier peace agreements.

There is a war-weariness now feeding in from all directions. Even American news outlets such as CNN have given voice to the suffering of both sides.

There’s a growing sense that something has to be done to stop this.

And just like here, in the 1990s, that’s going to take a giant leap of faith on all sides.

Some 20 years ago when I met those Israelis in Tokyo, I was conscious of how much they were just like me and other Westerners.

They were socially liberal, fond of partying, and hugely influenced by American/European culture.

They liked similar bands and drank similar beers. They’d have fitted into a night’s craic in an Irish pub in ways their Muslim neighbours never could or would.

The big difference though was in their character-hardening, uncompromising first-hand experience of war and military service.

Despite that, they recognised that some kind of peace deal had to be made with their neighbours.

That way, one day, we could all come to Tel Aviv and party on the beaches.

A couple of years later, when teaching in London, I emailed one of the group to say that I now had Palestinian students.

I may also have pointed out how intelligent, conversational, decent and kind they were.

She replied: “What are you teaching them for? You shouldn’t.”

With such words, I never heard from her again.

In just a couple of years, the party mood had passed. The peace hadn’t been won. It was back to fighting. Attitudes had hardened.

Israeli society had swung to the Right, caring more for containment than compromise.

It’s why two million people are crushed into the Gaza Strip, with a huge percentage of those under the age of 18.

That’s two million people in an area of 365 kilometres squared.

That’s about a fifth the size of Fermanagh.

To me, that sounds more like Hell than a Holy Land.

The actions of Hamas are inexcusable – utterly, absolutely, completely, unarguably – but so too is the collective punishment of a people.

That has to stop for the good of both sides. War’s the easy option right now.

Peace is a lot harder to win.