Simple answer, no it didn't become clear the conflict would drag on until about 1976 after the IRA switched strategy

Long answer!

Background

I'm going to ignore the whole story of the foundation of Northern Ireland as there are other answers out there that cover that extensively and it would only bog down this answer, instead I’ll start with an event that had perhaps the greatest effect on what occurred in 1969 and that has been largely forgotten, the riots and killings of summer 1935.

1935 bears an eery similarity to the events of 1969, as marching season began tensions began to grow across Belfast with open intimidation of Catholic workers becoming a regular occurrence, in early may the Catholic women of the Linfield Mill were forced to leave their jobs due to abuse from their co-workers and a mob forming outside, meanwhile in another part of the city Catholic women were chased home by a protestant mob. May came to end with a large-scale invasion attempt of Catholic streets that ran onto the major thoroughfare York Street, which would become the main location of later fighting. A member of the National Council for Civil Liberties was present at a riot on York street on June 12th and noted that despite their numbers and being backed with armoured cars why they had not moved to break up the Protestant mob, whose gathering was illegal and was clearly out for violence. On the 16th Protestants began firing into Catholic streets and in particular targeted Church goers hitting a 15-year-old girl, a crime which netted the shooter 3 months hard labour. Despite this the 17th saw an even larger escalation as almost every Catholic street connected to North Queen Street (which ran parallel to York Street) came under fire and led to the government banning gatherings except funerals, a ban flaunted by the Orange Order almost immediately.

June came to an end with chaos being a daily occurrence, by the time marching season had passed over 500 overwhelmingly Catholic families (2,241 people) had been driven from their homes, 10 people had been killed; 7 Protestants and 3 Catholics. Of the 7 Protestants killed, 6 were killed during rioting with seventh killed by other Protestants for being too friendly with local Catholics and was the only one killed in his own home or even in his own street.

You may be rightly asking where was the IRA in all this? The IRA had traditionally taken a summer camp south of the border to train its members in use of firearms and grenades (particularly the Thompson which was difficult to fire well without training) but also to give lectures on politics and military affairs. The Army Council had recommended the camp be called off as violence seemed inevitable, but it went ahead anyways with Jimmy Steele and Charlie Leddy leading but also with Army Executive member Jack McNally present, Jack Brady from the east of the city was left behind with most of his unit in case of trouble.

When trouble did start of the 12th of July two women visited Brady at his home and he promptly raised 30-armed IRA volunteers and rushed across to reinforce York Street, in a fit of irony one of units that had gone to the camp was A company, the unit that covered York street. News of the violence reached the camp 60 miles away late in the night and Steele who wished to return home with A company held off until 2am when McNally returned. McNally ordered the men to sleep until 6am then head home as no deaths had been reported yet but this delay was disastrous as in the morning the Garda Siochana raided the camp, arresting 12 and capturing dozens of weapons. Steele escaped and after regrouping with other scattered volunteers headed back to Belfast to relieve the badly pressed Brady unit.

The riots of 1935 rumbled to a close over the following weeks and left a bad memory in both Catholic population and the IRA, to add insult to injury the Northern Irish government blamed the Catholics for the violence, a claim made ridiculous but all the blatant evidence to the contrary. For the IRA members arrested at the camp they were given two years in imprison and as a spit in the face the Garda had passed their details to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The run to 69

34 years isn’t a long time, and many young men who had fought to defend their streets in 1935 were still around to remember the flames and shooting as Northern Ireland once again descended into chaos once again. Something was different this time around, the IRA was much reduced and had come under Marxist control after an extended period of flip flopping between the left and right of the political spectrum. The Belfast section had largely been separating to this political infighting as it had been primarily focused on defence, but tensions began to grow in the mid sixties as the new Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding and his right hand man Sean Garland had begun a steady push towards a Marxist interpretation of the conflict (devoid of sectarianism) and by some views away from militantism.

A second major change came in the form of veterans of the British Army. Despite the later disdain of the BA by Catholics and Nationalists it provided a good wage and a way to get out of Northern Ireland for the poorer population, especially in more peaceful years. By 1969 there several thousand Catholic veterans of the BA in the North which far dwarfed the dwindling IRA who found it increasingly hard to provide training to its members. Veterans on both sides would be invaluable to providing the initial expertise to get the various militant groups of the ground.

The third change was the civil rights movement but like the founding of Northern Ireland I’m going to rush past this as it’s a huge topic that would only bog this one down, but it should be noted that the infamous Burntollet bridge riot in which Protestants attacked civil rights marchers occurred on the 4th of January 1969, an early start to the violence of that year.

Separate to these events ever so slightly was the foundation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1966 alongside the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee and it’s militant wing the Ulster Protestant Volunteers. Despite a show bombing of Nelson’s pillar in Dublin the IRA by this point were on a peace footing but celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the Easter Rising had alarmed many fundamentalist Protestants like Ian Paisley. The UVF was formed and carried out it’s first killings in May 1969, an elderly protestant woman was killed in a botched petrol bombing of the Catholic owned bar on the7th and on the 27th they shot dead a Catholic as he walked home at night. During this period the UVF and UCDC/UPV grew close alongside the small grouping called Tara, however after Gusty Spence the leader of the UVF was arrested after the botched shooting of 3 Catholic workers, killing one on the 26th of June, the groups went their separate ways after the UVF was banned but the UCDC/UPV was not.