Where we went wrong: a Palestinian's soul search.

• Author: Ashrawi, Hanan
• Position: Israel-Arab conflict

The dynamics of violence, revenge, and all other forms of dehumanization seem to have taken hold as both Palestinians and Israelis are locked in a fatal embrace that promises to plunge both peoples into the abyss.

Objectively, the term "stranglehold" is a more appropriate description of the type of proximity between occupier and occupied, an abnormal grip that is both insanely obsessive and mutually destructive.

While immobilizing his "adversary," Ariel Sharon is repeatedly calling on Yasser Arafat to do more to "end the violence and rein in the terrorists." With mindless monotony, Israeli and American officials continue to chant this refrain like a blind chorus in a Greek tragedy, though lacking any critical distance or insight.

This bizarre and painful condition is no act of fate, no accident of history. Rather, it is the natural outcome of the deliberate distortion of history in the form of a festering colonial malady that has been allowed to infect both body and mind with no remedy in sight.

How else can one interpret the victimization of a whole captive and defenseless nation, with a no-holds-barred assault on their lives, lands, rights, freedoms, and aspirations?

How else can one interpret this incessant shelling, pounding, beating of a people who have nowhere to go beyond their homes and whose very homes are being demolished, burned, and besieged?

How else can one interpret this deliberate unraveling of the modest achievements of the peace process and the even more deliberate bulldozing of any prospects of a future peace?

How else can one interpret Sharon's blind extremism if not in the settling of historical scores (particularly with his favorite scapegoat/punching bag, President Arafat) and the stubborn compulsion of arrogance that can declare an "open season" on everything Palestinian and then order the Palestinians to do Israel's bidding in abject submission?

How else can one interpret the blinders that have suddenly and collectively warped the vision of most Israeli media, simultaneously distorting their perspective, scope, depth, and field of vision? The banal litany of official jargon, processed language, and uniform allocation of blame seems to have had a fatal impact on their own critical perceptions as well as on the conscience of their readers/viewers/audience.

How else can one interpret the self-destructive political sado-masochism that has rendered most of the Israeli "peace camp" both voiceless and powerless, with the...