On Innocent Bystanders

Read this about the real victims of Palestinian/Israeli violence...not the prospective governments, or even the "Road Map", but the normal people who, by accident of birth, happen to be of a particular nationality. Average Palestinians and Israelis are being killed and injured because of the actions of groups who presume to represent them.

The Israelis are suffering...

"I haven't heard all the names yet. I'm afraid of what I'll hear tonight," said Web page designer Rahel Sharon, 38. "I've already lost a few friends to terrorism."

Her friend Sara Duker, 22, a student from Teaneck, N.J., was killed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem in February 1996 along with her fiancee. Another friend, from the Netherlands, was killed in a shooting attack in 1994.

"It's very sad, very frightening," she said, as she stood at the bus stop where city bus No. 14 was destroyed in Wednesday's attack. She thanks God out loud each time she arrives home safely.

And the Palestinians are suffering...

The panic is equally unnerving for Palestinians after Israeli military strikes, which target militants but often kill and injure civilians. Four Israeli missile attacks in the last three days have hit crowded areas of Gaza.

The chop-chop of helicopter blades or first sight of a vapor trail from an Israeli F-16 fighter jet, is enough to set off panic in Gaza's streets after four airborne attacks in two days.

"Everyone now is a target, not only the fighters," said Radwan Aneen, 22, a falafel vendor.

His friend and fellow shopkeeper, Hammed, suffered two broken legs when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying two militants in a crowded market area Wednesday.

That attack killed the two Hamas operatives, but seven bystanders also died.

As an American, I cannot even imagine what living with that kind of constant fear would be like. The attacks from both sides of the conflict are doing nothing except for breeding more terrorism and causing more opression. Hamas isn't sufferring. Ariel Sharon and his hawks aren't sufferring. The people who are doing nothing but trying to ride the bus to work or harvest their olive groves, or live in their houses, or sell their wares on the street, they are the ones that are being hurt by this intifada.

If I were Empress of the Universe, the first thing I would do is set up Hamas and the IDF on a tiny desert island, where they could kill eachother to their heart's content and leave the rest of humanity out of their blood fest.