There can be no getting away from it: this Christmas season has been permeated – for all who pay attention to the media – by the evil of war. The Pope pleas for peace, secret negotiations take place, humanitarian crises get even more inhumane. There is no end to it except by disconnecting one from the mediatic sclerosis.

We try to switch off mentally by enjoying as much as possible our season of goodwill, by indulging in little feasts and merry tipples, by delighting in the crisp season’s walks. But for each of these the ghastly reverse comes to mind. For every slice of pudding there are those huddled masses starving in the midst of war. For every glass of brandy there are those dying of disease through lack of clean water. For every winter walk in pinewoods there are those prisoners unable to escape the raining of bombs onto their barbed-wire fenced mounds of concrete rubble.

Yet, in front of the horrific reality we are constantly having to face before our telescreens, the Israeli – Hammas war (or is it now a massacre?) is full of mysteries.

First, why attack a young persons’ pop concert rave in the middle of a desert instead of attempting to destroy the opponents’ military strength and organization? There is, however, a pattern among Islamic terrorists to attack music festival venues. We have seen this particularly in the Paris Bataclan and in Manchester’s Ariana Grande concert. It’s well known that where extreme Islamists rule the roost, music is banned, women are burkared, marriages are forced and dancing forbidden. So, seeing a whole lot of liberally dressed and minded young people enjoying themselves at a pop concert must be anathema to those fanatic killjoys who can only think of the annihilation of these events. Music is s light to the soul after all.

Second, why did the IDF not have found out about Hammas’ huge network of tunnels in time? With the multi-million pound investment in Israel’s state of the art defence technology it would have been a synch to have aimed infra-red night-vision cameras onto the Gaza strip which, after all, comprises an area barely the size of Lucca’s metropolitan district.

Furthermore, personal connections, spies, interrogations, tremor detectors could all have been used to spill the beans on the extent and range of the tunnels. Just quantifying the funds and supplies entering Gaza from investigated sources would have given the game away…a game which began in earnest in 2007 when Hammas was (presumably legally) elected into power. Where did the funds come from anyway? Were they diverted from those allocated for the benefit of Gaza’s citizens for education, social services and health.

Third, why throw out the baby with the bathwater? For every supposed Hammas chief killed tens if not hundreds of innocent citizens have been killed. It just doesn’t make for good public relations for a nation whose people have known what it’s like for their families to have been eliminated en mass not even eighty years ago.

Of course, behind all this apocalyptic scenario there are gruesome interests at work on all sides ranging from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Israel itself. Money, greed, power count more than humanitarianism, reconciliation, dialogue.

Less than ten years ago we visited a country that, while having its borders circumscribed by the maelstrom of the surrounding conflicts, is, in my opinion like a Switzerland in the centre of the Second World War. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a model of tolerance to be followed, a path towards a solution. It is always having to pick up the pieces of any conflict that springs in that part of the world. While visiting Jordan in 2014 I was reminded of my previous visit to that beautiful country. It was in the spring of 1967 and old Jerusalem was then part of the kingdom of Jordan. We reached Amman and visited its Roman theatre.

We crossed the river where John baptised Jesus and reached the Dome of the Rocks. We were surrounded by all those sites which have resonance to those familiar with the Bible: the Sepulchre, Golgotha, the Mount of Olives. Only a wall separated us from Israel but we were told that all the major sites associated with the three monotheistic religions were on our side of that wall.

That futile war of 1967 was followed sadly by so many other equally futile ones. Jordan was unable to defend its neutrality and became involved in the turmoil. Losing its left bank to Israel it had to reconstruct itself and has remained a nation which offers hope to all around it.

Thank God for Jordan! How is it that a nation in which different ethnicities and religions can coexist with each other is flanked by others in which these values are flatly denied?

In my dreams I see a truly Holy Land, a land which is proud of not taking sides with any other, a land in which east and west banks are as one, where Jerusalem is the capital, not of one nation or even two, but of the entire world, where a universal religious synchretism provides an enduring basis for world peace.

Can this be just a dream? A dream can always become reality if one has the faith to believe in it, if one works hard for that belief to endure, if one infuses it with universal love.