News of a cease-fire is, of course, to be welcomed. However, this is not the end of the diplomatic work but only the beginning. This temporary truce must now be turned into a durable peace if we are not, in time, to witness even more suffering and loss of life.

The recent rocket attacks on the civilian population of southern Israel deserve our categoric condemnation. Last year when I visited a school in the Eshkol region, the very concept of a school with bomb shelters and bullet-proof windows was abhorrent to me. Theirs was a quiet suffering that too often gets ignored and can never be excused.

Israel has a right to defend itself against rocket attacks. No community should have to live in constant fear. But Israel's citizens can never be truly protected by military means alone. Ordinary Israelis and Palestinians deserve more than an inevitably fragile cease-fire that only temporarily ensures their security.

This was the logic of Operation Cast Lead four years ago, but that strategy has been found wanting. Israel's stated aim for that Operation was to "destroy the apparatus of terror." Yet, four years on, Hamas still rules Gaza and thousands of missiles have been launched since 2009: in recent days alone, rockets have reached Tel Aviv and the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Operation Cast Lead not only caused huge suffering and loss of life, it also weakened Israel's support in the international community. And few today in Sderot, Ashkelon or now Tel Aviv, again living in fear of rocket attack, will be convinced it succeeded in guaranteeing their protection.

Some will argue that no one - certainly not a foreign politician - who has not experienced the daily threat of rocket attacks has the right to offer views on the present situation. Others will say that so soon after rockets have fallen and bombs have gone off, now is not the time to look beyond a military response.

Israel of course will reach its own decisions, but undoubtedly the decisions on how to respond to those latest attacks will have an impact on the prospects for guaranteeing Israel's long term security - which relies on more than just defending itself against present threats.

There is and can be no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Only a political resolution to this conflict will provide the security that Israelis, and Palestinians, crave and rightly deserve.

For Israel, permanent occupation, repeated incursions and ongoing blockades is not a strategy for peace. It is a recipe for repeated conflict. And for the Palestinians, ongoing rocket attacks, continued questioning of Israel's right to exist, and divided leadership, will bring no hope of progress.

But after decades of diplomatic failure, we must also acknowledge that some are questioning whether a two-state solution is even possible.

Today the fear of the Israeli population stands alongside the suffering of the Palestinian people. Hope struggles to survive. That was one lesson taught to me by the school teacher I met in the Eshkol Regional High School last year. She was exactly the kind of caring and wise woman you hope will teach your own kids. She told me that her job was to teach children the curriculum, but she felt impelled to try and teach them something else. She told me her ambition was that no child leave her classroom believing that the Palestinian children on the other side of the border were the enemy. Given the constant threat of rockets, hers is a difficult task, and she admitted to me that she feared that without political change she would fail in her ambition.

We must make sure that she succeeds. Israel has shown its willingness to take military action. Now is exactly the time to show it is also ready to take bold diplomatic action.

Many Israelis are inevitably frustrated that past offers for peace and painful compromises have failed to yield results. But despite diplomatic setbacks, it is only politics that offers a way forward. And after decades of diplomatic failure, with the region more fragile and febrile than for decades, there is another reason once again to take risks for peace.

As an international community, we must do whatever it takes to ensure the Palestinians - despite the despair, the disappointments and the setbacks - take the path of politics and not the path of violence in pursuit of statehood.

That is why the British Labour Party will support the Palestinian bid for enhanced status at the United Nations later this month.

We see this not as an alternative to negotiations but as a bridge for beginning these negotiations. Rather than creating another fault line with Israel, recognition can and must be used as way of restarting the peace process.

Some argue that recognition at the UN could "risk paralyzing the process." But at present, there is no process - there is only paralysis. Palestinian recognition offers a way to embed politics as the way forward, entrench the principle of a two-state solution, and build serious negotiations from there about how this goal can be achieved.

Ultimately there can be no military solution to this crisis. Israel needs a strategy for building peace and not just tactics for winning the next round of war.

The writer is the British Shadow Foreign Secretary and Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.