Last night at 9:00pm, I wrote an email to my best friend about my trip to Ramallah last weekend, my upcoming visit to Bethlehem, and how much I desperately want to stay in Jerusalem for a second year. A few minutes later, I heard sirens; not so unusual, perhaps, but more persistent than I’m accustomed to hearing. Within half an hour the news of the terror attack on the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem was all over the internet, and I spent the next hour making sure my family and friends knew that I was fine.

The cycle of violence here has ebbed and flowed, but I’m worried that this time it’s the beginning of another major wave.

One interesting thing to note; the “security wall” guarantees security for no one.

There are so many problems in this part of the world which have absolutely no solution. I won’t be able to visit my friends in Ramallah in the near future, and they certainly can’t visit me. I know a sweet 15-year-old Palestinian flautist who turns 16 next month, when she won’t be allowed to come to Jerusalem anymore for her lessons. They’re trying to find her a new flute teacher who doesn’t have Israeli citizenship, and so will be allowed to go teach her in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem. People who have been active in the peace movement for years and years on both sides are getting increasingly frustrated, and the leaders on both sides simply don’t listen. They both resort to violence when it’s absolutely unnecessary, and it’s appalling.

Driving back from my visit to Ramallah last week, seeing the Palestinian boys on one side with stones and the slightly-older Israeli boys on the other with guns, I could only hope that someone brave enough might jump in the middle and say ENOUGH. But it takes everyone agreeing that enough is enough, and no one agrees about anything.

Even within our communities there’s too much fracturing; the Palestinians are internally on the brink of a civil war. The orthodox refuse to recognize the Jewishness of those of us from more progressive movements, and the right-wingers in the settler movements refuse to see the left-wing activists as even human. There are bitter disputes within every community to the extent that no one person has any authority to sit down and talk with someone from the “other side,” whatever that might be.

Today is Friday, which is the Muslim holy day, and all Arab men under 45 are being barred from entering the temple mount, where they pray at Al-Aqsa. Shabbat starts at 5:01, and Jews have been warned not to go to the Western Wall today, due to threats of violence. How can we pray for peace when we’re preventing each other from going to our holiest places?

I really think Jerusalem needs to be under international law, like Rome, a state unto itself. And just as a Muslim family in the Old City keeps the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to prevent the different Christian sects from fighting over access to the church, I say we put Jerusalem under the jurisdiction of the Dalai Lama, or the Cherokee Nation, or maybe a coven of nice Wiccans from the Bay Area. People who are not Jewish or Muslim or even Christian. Someone who has no emotional connection whatsoever to this town should be put in power, because I don’t think there’s a shred of real trust left in this country, and no basis for trust to develop.

Everyone I talk to, Palestinian and Israeli and otherwise, simply wants peace. My Palestinian cab driver from Ramallah last week asked me what I thought of the upcoming American presidential elections, happily encouraged my badly-pronounced attempt to speak Arabic, and asked me how long I was living here. He asked me what I thought of the Palestinians I had met, and told me that I shouldn’t judge them by their leaders. I agreed, on the condition that he shouldn’t judge me by mine.

In the end, it’s the governments that continue to fail us so miserably on all sides. Olmert and his thugs and Hamas are equally responsible for what is happening in Gaza, in Sderot, in the West Bank, and now in Jerusalem. Hamas doesn’t want peace in the end, and they don’t care if most of the residents of Gaza desperately do. Israel’s government would obviously rather find reasons to escalate violence than actually honor their word when they agree to a cease-fire, fingers crossed behind their backs.

In the few hours before shabbat, I’m working on a paper about the prophet Jeremiah, who in the year 625 BCE said:

Hew down her trees, And cast up a mound against Jerusalem; This is the city to be punished; Everywhere there is oppression in the midst of her. (6:6) This city has aroused my anger and my wrath from the day it was built until this day, so that it must be removed from my sight. (32:31)

I’m also thinking about Abraham; when god told him that Sarah would have a son, and that their son would be the father of nations, inheriting beautiful, fruitful lands, Abraham first laughs at the prospect of a child being born to such elderly parents, and then pleads with god, “Oh, that Ishmael might live in your favor!” (Bereshit 17:18)

The fact that the current situation is by no means a new phenomenon is somehow both depressing and comforting. I only hope that one day soon, not 2,600 years from now, we’ll all finally learn lessons from the past and not be continually doomed to repeat it.