Editor’s note: As violence erupted in the Middle East in late September and escalated to the brink of war in the ensuing days, The Catholic Herald received numerous E-mail accounts and commentaries from Israelis, Palestinians and Americans living in Israel and the Palestinian Territory. Below is a sampling of their remarks. As The Herald went to press, Israeli and Palestinian leaders meeting in Egypt agreed to a cease-fire, but violence continued in the immediate aftermath.

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“Jewish tradition tells us that everyone is created in the image of God, and since we all are descended from one human being, to destroy life is like destroying the world. But unfortunately right now, we’re in a situation where nobody is very capable of opening their hearts to the other, or empathizing with their pain in a basic human way.

“There are hair-raising stories of excessive Jewish use of force. And yet, the Palestinian use of violence, however justified their anger might be, has pushed even many moderate and progressive Israelis into the war camp. Thursday’s lynch in Ramallah (when a Palestinian mob killed two Israeli reserve soldiers who had stumbled into the city) was just the icing on the cake…Israel talked peace but continued with house demolitions, land expropriations and human rights violations. But at the same time, the Palestinian leadership misread the map and played a game of brinkmanship. It’s a back-and-forth kind of dialectic, and the war drums are beating.”

—Rabbi Arik Asherman, chairman of Rabbis for Human Rights, who led a small group of Jews to northern Israel to visit both Arab and Jewish wounded, victims of riots in Haifa, Nazareth and elsewhere in Galilee (Oct. 16).

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“In the opening of our worship service today, one of the prayers began ‘in this time when peace has broken down,’ and I realized as these words were spoken how deeply the vision of the last seven years under Oslo has skewed the world’s understanding of the situation here.

“Peace has not broken down in the last 10 days—the reality is we’ve never been at peace. Under the Oslo process, Palestinians have looked toward a day when peace would arrive, but not any peace. Not a peace built without any quality of justice in it. Day after day, year after year, they have sat at the table negotiating, while land was still being confiscated, new settlements being built, access to Jerusalem controlled, economic development stilted due to lack of control of borders, water resources depleted, and refugees still longing to return home.

“What we are seeing now is the frustration and anger and disappointment that the Oslo process has brought them. This is a cry for a real peace, a just peace—not any peace. If this cry is not heard, then I’m afraid that the anger and frustration will finally turn to hate and many more lives, Palestinian and Israeli, will be lost. It’s a long road back from hate to negotiation...”

—Rev. Sandra Olewine, a United Methodist minister on the staff of Catholic Relief Services in Bethlehem (Oct. 8).

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“Yesterday night, for the first time since 1967, we closed the main gate of the monastery, and every one in the town was trying to sleep without this feeling of fear, anger and (being) unsafe. The young people are now doing a kind of security patrols in the town during the night, to avoid the attack of the Israelis, or at least give us an alert to hide....

“Above all these things, all of us, we have a very deep and strong faith in the Almighty and His love, even as we have some questions without an answer, like: it is a holy land, so should we suffer always for living on this ‘holiness’.

“The dilemma is that everyone believes in God and thinks that it is holy and should be just for him. The only common thing between ‘the three faiths’ is the main reason for the war...

“I think for us Palestinian Christians, our love for the Holy Land is ‘an open and sharing love’, and from the history and our experience, no one can just dominate and control this land, without giving the others their rights, freedom and dignity.

“Do you think that the Jewish people or the Muslims share it with us? I think that their love for Jerusalem is a ‘possessive love.’”

—Father Abouna Iyad Twal, parish priest in Bier Zeit, Palestine (Oct. 10).

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“Every funeral breeds avengers, every grave deepens the hatred, causing more casualties. The ordinary, non-lethal means of riot control, that do not cause escalation, would have been more useful.

“The way of thinking of the generals, those who planned the operation and those who command it, arouses sad reflections. Once we had commanders of moral convictions, like Yitzhaq Sadeh and Shimon Avidan, and sophisticated generals, like Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan.

“Within one generation we have acquired generals who resemble their worst American and Russian counterparts, generals who believe in brute force. Those have been beaten everywhere, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Ours were beaten in Lebanon, and they go on.

“The use of attack helicopters and missiles is courting disaster. Sooner or later, inevitably, something like the Kafr-Kana disaster in the Wrath of Grapes war in Lebanon will happen: an accidental massacre of civilians, whose photos will arouse worldwide outrage.”

—Uri Avnery, an activist in the Peace Now movement called Shalom Achsav (Oct. 7).

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