Something fundamentally is missed here.



The PA continues to publicly honor anyone who has killed Israeli citizens, even a busload of children. It continues to educate children in the hatred of all things Israeli, without any thought to even to future toleration of a Jewish minority within a Palestine in the elimination of an Israeli state. Hamas is even more direct on its intent for Israeli Jewish citizens. In short, in all internal actions, all present Palestinian leadership has geared its society, even the next generation, for never accepting any peace for any amount of land.



Atop this, lies a continuous history of land for non-Arabic promises of peace, followed by intifada and terrorism, followed by new demands, and so forth. For the average Israeli, the ever-improving missile batteries aimed at their cities from the last bit of land given for peace, serves as a most bitter reminder. At each stage, Israel is generally unilaerally condemned for anything and everything under the sun by an automatic majority. Already years back, one peace camp Israeli complained that others equated his "Peace Now" bumper sticker with "Idiot" -- and frankly he was finding it difficult not to agree with them.



Is it any wonder that the average Israeli now sees "land for peace" as the same kind of slogan as "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Labor Makes Freedom"), placed over the entrance way of some WWII Nazi death camps. So what did they do in the ghettos and camps? -- Focus internally.



But is this healthy? Ultimate perhaps, this would be best for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the Arab World in general.



The Israelis must come to a sense of true unity -- a sense of national cohesiveness not primarily founded on a common existential threat. Such physical threat and build up of this mentality, has literally been without real let up since Israel's inception, and continued naturally when joined by others also fleeing the threat of physical or cultural annihilation -- whether survivors of the Second World war, the 600,000 Jewish refugees from the surrounding Arab countries, or those who fled Ethiopia or left Russia. And of course, the land for peace kicks in the teeth have only hardened things further.



As well, soul searching among the Palestinians themselves is required. What realistically do they want eventually? Can they find a unity, a cultural bonding among their own people which does not depend upon a common hatred of the "Zionist enemy"? Golda Meir once stated that once Israel's neighbors loved their own children more than they hated Israel, then there would be peace -- can the Palestinians, on a national level, make this breakthrough and challenge the Israelis with it?



And the surrounding milieu, from the Arabian peninsula to Tehran, simply cannot be ignored in this -- it is absurd to think the whole matter of peace is limited to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.



Ultimately though Golda Meir's message represents a universal challenge. When love of our human commonality overcomes our hatred of difference -- that hatred will transform into respect and a sense of mutual responsibility. Only then will the ever darkening clouds over the whole world part to let in the sun's rays.



Whether historic, or merely the writer's creative, there was a particularly poignant scene from a docudrama on the life of Gandhi years back. During Gandhi's hunger strike, a certain trouble Hindu approached Gandhi about believing himself destined for hell over his murder of a Muslim child during a riot. Gandhi told the man that he knew a way out of hell. Find a Muslim orphan, and raise him as you would your own child -- but raise him to be a Muslim.



Can the Israeli, the Palestinians, Arab nations, and general Muslim World, and in fact the whole world -- particularly Europe today -- find it in themselves to reach the level of love above hate that Gandhi recommends? Of all wars, it is this internal one -- and it must truly be a "world war" (against a truly common enemy) -- that will be the fiercest, and whose victory will be the sweetest -- forever...