The most tragic aspect is that there is no longer hope that a settlement is somewhere within reach, with a little more persuasion here, a little more pressure there, that somehow the killing can be stopped.
But that isn't really surprising. It was evident all along that failure would bring worse than just lack of success in finding peace because Palestinians have acquired arms, Israelis are losing certain moral restraints, and because both peoples are angry and frustrated and see no way to advance but through violence.
Even Ehud Barak, the last Israeli prime minister who probably offered more than his government could have delivered, now says there can be no chance of a solution until Yasser Arafat is replaced by another Palestinian leader. But there is not the slightest prospect of another Palestinian leader to make concessions and impose an end to violence on his irate people. And there is no reason to expect another Israeli prime minister to be more accommodating to Palestinian demands than Ariel Sharon.
Each side is now reduced to the old fantasy that the other side will tire of the conflict, wear down and go away. It remains just as much of a fantasy as it has been for so many wars of attrition and so many interludes of proposals, mediations, new ideas and old furies.
It would appear that nothing changes. But on the contrary, there has been a long series of change on both sides since European Jews set out to build a new homeland in ancient Zion and, when the British mandate power pulled out in 1948, proclaimed an independent Jewish state.
Weak and small as it was, the survival of Israel against the onslaught of three Arab armies was a kind of miracle.
Then, after the 1967 war, Israel sought to wish away the Palestinians. Prime Minister Golda Meir said there was no such place as Palestine and General Ariel Sharon said their homeland was on the other side of the Jordan. So the Oslo negotiations seven years ago represented a tremendous breakthrough. Each side accepted the justified existence of the other.
During the long confrontation, attitudes have gradually changed. Living under Israeli occupation, Palestinians didn't come to like them any better but many did come to value education and a free press, and to see what was meant by the concept of human rights.
Israelis, living in increasing comfort, inevitably relaxed the selfless pioneer spirit and its high moral demands. But they sustained the determined democracy and demand for social justice that informed the early Zionists.
Israel has always rejected the death penalty as a matter of principle, with the one exception of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Nazi death camps. So it is a profound irony that a new policy, called "active defense," has been put into practice without any intervention by the courts. It is the targeted assassination of Palestinians whom the military or the police consider terrorists on the basis of secret intelligence.
If, as happened this week, two children and a visiting journalist are also killed in these attacks, that is considered the sad fate of innocent bystanders. The argument in Israel now is no longer about degrading its own moral values in treating other people this way, but whether the Sharon government is showing "too much restraint." Is that a call for outright massacre ?
And yet it comes at a time when world opinion is moving increasingly to demand punishment for war crimes, and from countries which have long been friends and supporters of Israel. It is true that Arab regimes have committed atrocities with no international retribution. But Israel always considered itself different, was acknowledged as different and was different.
Now a Belgian judge is taking up the case of Mr. Sharon's role in the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila, and Denmark doesn't want to accept as Israeli ambassador a former secret police chief who found torture useful.
No doubt it comes as an incredible shock to Israel, with its past and its ideals, to be accused of crimes against humanity, by people who are in no way its enemies. That, too, is part of the profound change that has been going on. To say that its foes are just as bad, or worse, is no excuse at all. Nobody is gaining anything in this fight, not even security, let alone honor.
Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune