As key players continue in Cairo to try to hammer out a more durable ceasefire to the conflict in Gaza following this week’s 72-hour truce brokered by Egypt, a former leading British diplomat in the Middle East analyses the problems both new and old faced by peacemakers As perpetrators are inclined chillingly to trivialise brutality, some in the Israeli military have reportedly become accustomed over the years to describe action against Gaza as “mowing the lawn”. It well describes the repetitiveness, though not the violence, of what we have been forced to watch these past weeks. This is the third major Israeli military campaign against Gaza in the past six years. It is the longest and costliest. The ostensible object­ive is the same: to protect Israel from Hamas&rsq