Peace is the only effective response to conflict

by Sarah-Leah Pimentel

A war to end all wars. We’ve heard this before. Yet experience tells us that there is always another war brewing somewhere in the world.

Let’s be clear. War can never achieve peace. War advances the interests of weapons manufacturers and rulers with aspirations of grandeur, or those coerced into waging war out of fear or pride. At times, wars are misguided attempts to correct past wrongs or defend the rights of an oppressed group. Whatever its reasons, war only unleashes more misery on those already suffering in difficult places. Too often, it’s not the warmongers who pay the ultimate price but the helpless civilians who find themselves caught up in conflicts not of their own making.

It is clear from these opening statements that at the forefront of my mind is the most recent conflict in the Middle East, prompted by Israel and the United States. I have previously written about the unequal war between Israel and Palestine. In the last 10 days, our attention has been drawn away from the continued suffering of the Palestinians living in a ceasefire that is anything but peaceful. The world’s gaze is now focused on the wider military escalation of Iran’s retaliatory strikes that have affected Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Omar, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Unlike the Israel/Gaza war, the ramifications of hostilities in the Middle East will affect all of us economically. For South Africans, we’ll feel it most acutely at the petrol pump. This week, they’re talking about four to eight rand more per litre in April if the oil price continues to surge, reaching $118 per barrel on Tuesday. Think about it, we may be paying R150 more for every tank, and that is, if oil isn’t rationed to stretch our very limited reserves. This alone will have a devastating knock-on effect on the cost of food production and transportation. The price of everything will increase at a time when South African households are already stretched beyond capacity. Our economy was slowly starting to strengthen after years of insignificant growth. Still, economists say this war (in which we have no part) could set back our economic revival by another two years.

Is economic survival more important than the lives of the thousands of people who have died in nearly three years of war in the Middle East? Of course not. But in many ways, the Palestinian conflict only touched us intellectually, where our support either for Israel or the Palestinians came down to our ideological and ethical positions.

This time, the decisions made in Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran affect our pockets directly. Therefore, let us not fall for the lies of those who will tell us that this war will make us all safer (I thought we’d already destroyed Iran’s nuclear arsenal in June 2025?). Yes, Iran has one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, but Israel has also just killed 75,000 people. There are no good guys. None of the nations currently at war is a moral standard for human rights.

Where does that leave us as Christians? Christ reminds us that indeed “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). He calls us to unceasingly promote dialogue and reconciliation as the only sure ways to peace. Peace demands creativity to find the middle ground that bridges the divide between antagonistic ideologies. Like the Good Samaritan, we are called to always side with the victims, even if they are strangers in faraway lands. That is the way of love, the only antidote to war and conflict.

We might feel helpless, far from the decision-making centres that will decide on the configuration and length of this conflict. But we can still do something. How about joining the swell of voices throughout the world in praying for peace?  Pope Leo’s prayer intention for March is for disarmament and peace. Let us storm heaven with our petitions, so that those who have the power to decide our futures may walk back from death and destruction and choose the path to peace.