The Middle East is a bedrock for faith and civilization.  Like most people, I was horrified and heartbroken by the news of the attacks in Israel.  Terrorism and violence beget more bloodshed and fear, but resolve nothing.  Sadly, since the medieval Crusades, the Middle East has experienced terrorism and violence.  The centuries-old, romanticized ideas of horseback and swordplay have been replaced by the sophistication and horrors of modern warfare.  

Twenty-five years ago, I toured Israel with a group of local elected officials on a legislative study mission.   This weekend, I reviewed my journal from that trip, and found that it appears that not much has changed during the past quarter century.  Our tour schedule included a trip to the Golan Heights, a kibbutz near the Lebanon border, a visit to an Israeli Air Force base, the Knesset (Israel’s Congress), the Hadassah Hospital at Ein Karem, and an unforgettable meeting with representatives of the Palestine Political Council.

Especially memorable was our discussion with young Israeli Air Force pilots.  One young man had just turned 22 and noted that most pilots in the U.S. were considerably older, yet he was responsible for just as much multi-million-dollar machinery as they were.  If you join the Army at 18, serve two years, and then attend flight school, you could be flying jets at 21 or 22, without a college education.  The Air Force divides up the air space, even over the Mediterranean Sea, and it is easy to fly from one side of Israel to the other in a matter of minutes.  A wall map showed how tight the airspace is; a jet barely gets off the ground before the pilot must make immediate maneuvers to remain in Israeli airspace.

If airspace is tight, the view from the Golan Heights demonstrates just how compact the area is.  Our tour bus followed a tank road to the ridge of a mountain; the roadsides were fenced off and posted for left-over mines.  It was desolate, with an occasional deep gash in the soil – tank traps gouged out by bulldozers to protect the Golan Heights for its water and its strategic geography.  

Coincidentally, Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister during our visit.  He was not terribly popular in 1998; now, 25 years later, Netanyahu is in power for the third time. In our discussions with the Palestine Political Council, the peace process dominated, but there seemed to be little acceptance of compromise.  One Palestinian representative noted that “there must be compromise.  Israel must give some; Palestinians may give some.”  Conditions in Gaza were described as depressive and oppressive, and that no amount of investment in schools, hospitals, etc., would compensate for loss of land.  There was a lot of frank discussion, but few realistic solutions.  

A later discussion with members of the Knesset reflected similar feelings.  A Likud Party member told us that Palestinians are not prepared to give up.  “It is Western thinking vs. Eastern thinking.  Arabs see land, and are unprepared to compromise on anything,” he said.  The intensity of those conversations was tempered a bit by a young mother from a West Bank settlement, who said “the hardest thing to do as a mother is to teach your children not to hate.  The idea is to avoid war, not merely win it when it comes.  We have a right to be here as well.  Nobody loves land more than lives in this country.”  

The hard lines I observed 25 years ago haven’t changed much.  As with all conflicts, noncombatants may pay the heaviest price, as families, homes, schools, and businesses are destroyed.  Bloodshed and fear will continue to prevail, as new generations face the same challenges that have defined the Middle East for many decades, if not centuries