Israel and Gaza on Tenterhooks

The Bible says that when the first blood was shed among His children, God asked Cain the slayer, 'Where is Abel thy brother?' And he said, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?' And the Lord said "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed..The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arabs, Jews, and Christians, and too much of it has been spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God- an anguish cry for peace."

The Oslo Declaration of Principles in 1993, signed in that memorable ceremony on the White House lawn, was intended to transform the Israelis and Palestinians from bitter enemies into partners.

Unlike some of his successors, Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin believed that incidents of anti-Israel violence should not be allowed to sidetrack negotiations, because he believed that terrorism should not be empowered to prevent peace.

It was common sense to fight terror as if there were no negotiations and to negotiate as if there were no terror. He distrusted PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat but argued that a carefully designed peace was the only pragmatic path for either side, given their destiny, to live together as neighbors sharing the same land.

During peace negotiations, King Hussein of Jordan once expressed his desire to Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the need to end the violence of death, destruction, and waste and to occupy a place "beyond ourselves, our peoples, that is worthy of them under the sun, the descendants of the children of Abraham- Palestinians and Israelis coming together,"