Will we never learn...?

I have so far studiously tried to avoid commenting on the Israeli-Lebanon-Palestine conflict, but the latest news that we (Brits) have failed to join with the majority of the rest of the world in calling for an immediate ceasefire makes me ashamed. Whatever the rationale, the brutal fact is that scores of innocent people - on all sides - are being killed every day the conflict continues. Assuming there is a ceasefire in, say, five weeks' time, what are we supposed to say to the families of those who, make no mistake about it, will be killed during those five weeks, and who otherwise might not have been? It may be nearly four hundred years since John Donne wrote these powerful words, but they are as apposite today as they ever were: "...therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."