Most Israelis, Palestinians victims, not warriors

Jerusalem: It happens only minutes after we pass through the checkpoint. A car stops. Israeli policemen approach. The driver is a Palestinian, 22 years old. There is a deafening blast, a flash of fire, as the driver turns himself and his vehicle into a bomb.

In this conflict, fought against the backdrop of the Holy Land, symbols abound. Few episodes, though, seem to more succinctly symbolize and summarize the situation than this one. From the Palestinian point of view, here are arbitrary and humiliating security checks in a land they claim as their own. From the Israeli point of view, here is the suicidal terrorism that makes such restrictions necessary.

It is easy to see this fight in symbolic terms. Two peoples, locked in historical struggle. A clash of cultures, each determined to prevail. This is how it looks from afar, as the bloody drama plays out on TV screens throughout the world.

Even here, on the ground in the heart of the Middle East, there are times when the battle seems to fit such black-and-white descriptions. Times such as the one described, when human bombs turn city streets into killing zones. And times like those witnessed in the West Bank, when tanks rumble through ancient towns and helicopter gunships deal death from above.

Go a little deeper, though, below the stark surface of attack and counterattack, and you find something else: families struggling to go on with life amid chaos and killings.