There are two words for peace in Arabic, "Salam," meaning a state of non-belligerency is currently preferred by Arabs over "Sulh", which suggests reconciliation – the kind of peace sought by Israelis. The difference between the two words is not mere semantics, it reflects the nature of the different objectives brought to the peace conference by Arabs and Israelis.

By focusing primarily on Israel and the Palestinians in its strategy for peace in the Middle East, the Bush administration is ignoring a third essential player – Syria. Secretary of State James Baker's call on Israel to "lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of greater Israel and forswear annexation," and his equally blunt call to the Palestinians "to speak in one voice … and amend the Palestinian Liberation Organization covenant and resort to a dialogue of politics and diplomacy" was certainly courageous, balanced, and overdue. Peace will not be achieved, however, without Syria's ultimate cooperation. Syrian President Hafez Assad's self-imposed mission to shape the Arab agenda on the Palestinian and Lebanese issues has often strained his relationships with his fellow Arab leaders and further complicated the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

The avowal of human rights as a political, religious, and moral philosophy, and as an ideal that governs the relationship between groups and individuals, has had a long and mixed history.

In the wake of the recent "discovery" of a chemical weapons plant in Libya and a biological weapons plant in Iraq, the need for Israel's pre-emptive strategy and maintenance of military superiority has now come into renewed focus.

For years, the conventional wisdom about the Middle East has been that peace between Israel and the Palestinians was unlikely in the foreseeable future.  

Even before Secretary General Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet leadership had concluded that severing diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967 to placate its Arab clients was a major political mistake. It locked the Soviets into policies and commitments towards their Arab clients from which they could not easily extract themselves.

Two thousand years of pogroms and persecutions culminating in the Nazi holocaust contributed immeasurably to Jewish thinking and behavior after World War II.