Israeli writer, Amos Oz:

I am more angry now, with both leaderships, than I have been for many years. I think Arafat and Sharon are almost handcuffed to one another in the sense of being the slaves of the past, of the traumatized past; lack of trust, lack of good will, lack of vision, lack of imagination, and lack of political courage. In many ways, I regard Sharon and Arafat as birds of a feather.

The two nations are haunted by their pasts. It may be interesting to point out that both Israeli Jew and Palestinian Arab are victims of Europe in two different ways. The Arabs were victimized by Europe through colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and exploitation. The Jews through suppression, discrimination, and finally, mass murder in the Nazi period.

Now, two victims of the same oppressor do not necessarily become brothers. Two children of the same cruel parent do not necessarily hug one another. Sometimes the worst rivalries in private life as well as in communal life are precisely the conflict between two victims of the same oppressor. Two children of the same cruel parent, who look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent, or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab. It's a conflict between two victims.

In a strange sense, I thought (re: the Sept. 11 attacks), it was a sobering lesson for everybody. If we don't stop somewhere, if we don't accept an unhappy compromise; unhappy for both sides, if we don't learn how to unhappily coexist and contain our burned sense of injustice, if we don't learn how to do that, we end up in a doomsday.

--Excerpt from interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, April 2, 2002