I have never been to Gaza, but I can imagine what life (if you can call it life) must be like in that ‘waste land’ because of all I witnessed when taking humanitarian aid into the city of Vukovar in the early 1990s. I will never forget the destruction I encountered.

I believe as many as 12,000 shells and rockets had been fired into the city on a daily basis with the result my Croatian guide couldn’t identify the street he had lived on as a child let alone the house that he had called home.

My heart breaks for all those involved in the current conflict in Gaza. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of those Israeli families and hostages who have suffered and continue to suffer following the October 7th massacres. I am equally heartbroken when I see the carnage and devastation wreaked on the Palestinian people living in ‘the land of rubble and death’.

I desperately want Israel to feel secure, but I am equally passionate to see the establishment of a Palestinian state once this terrible conflict has come to an end. I’m not sure if anyone is going to be able to square this circle however, given the bitterness and anger that has been generated on both sides over the years.

The constant claims and counter claims sadden me too, and it is particularly upsetting to be told we can’t trust the humanitarian organisations as a source of reliable information. That is why I wish the Israeli government would allow some independent reporters to enter Gaza. I am sure there are those who would be brave enough to go in and assess the evidence and shed some light on what is really going on.

In the midst of claim and counter claim, fake news and seemingly trustworthy news though one comment in particular grabbed my attention. I was listening to a Palestinian talking about the way in which he and his family have learned to cope with the dangers they face on a daily, indeed a nightly basis. It seems that they simply try to show love to each other while they’re alive because they don’t know how long they will be able to do that.

We should all think like that even when we’re not living on a battlefield. The apostle Paul put it well when he told his friends that they should never go to bed angry and that they should do all they could to live at peace with everyone.

That’s not always easy of course. It can mean forgiving someone or apologising to them for example, and as I’ve learned people can spurn our offers of reconciliation. But it does mean that we can go to sleep in the knowledge that we have done everything we can to improve the situation. We need to pray too until everything is as it should be.