In late June I arrived in Israel for a two-week visit. I was there to lead a group of more than a dozen Jewish lay leaders in a week of formal study at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Ironically, the theme was “Religion, Ethics and Violence.” The trip was interesting in ways I would prefer it never to be.

I spent the first few days of my visit to Israel on vacation in Haifa and points north. I took a drive through Nazareth and Tiberias, Sfat and the Golan Heights up to Kiryat Shmoneh. Then I drove west to the sea along the Lebanese border. I stopped for lunch in Naharia, where I sat for an extra hour in the peaceful afternoon shade to people-watch and listen to an old man play folk tunes on an ancient concertina. This was the Sunday, June 25, the day after Gilad Shalit was abducted in Gaza.

Things grew more tense as the days passed. The TV showed artillery shells exploding on the Lebanese hills I had so admired during my drive. A few days later I watched a broadcast from the sidewalk in front of the very restaurant in Naharia where I enjoyed my lunch; the reporter was showing the damage from a Katyusha rocket. It fell across the street from where I had sat, and it killed a woman there. These are sad and painful times.

I love the idea of an immediate peace and serious negotiations, but what evidence is there to support the hope that negotiations will work? And hope is just not enough anymore.

In the hope of peace Israel withdrew completely and unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000. Israel hoped that the 2004 passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for Hezbollah to cease hostilities and to disarm would make a difference. But UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, failed in its mission of enforcing 1559, and a lot of innocent people on both sides of the border died as a result.

No amount of hope changes the hard fact that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, clearly rejected the Interim Agreement of 1995 between the Palestinians and Israelis that called for disarming the political factions. “The Americans and Europeans say to Hamas: Either you have weapons or you enter the legislative council. We say [we will have] weapons and the legislative council. There is no contradiction between the two.” (New York Times, January 26, 2006.)

More troubling still, Hezbollah and Hamas still openly call for the total destruction of Israel. A full five years after Israel withdrew completely from Lebanon, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah broadcast this message: “Israel is our enemy. This is an aggressive, illegal, and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land. Its destiny is manifested in our motto: ‘Death to Israel.’” (Al-Jazeera TV, February 20, 2005, emphasis added.)

The Hamas Charter states, in part: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. ‘Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep’ ... The time [of peace] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’” (Emphasis added.)

Until Hezbollah and Hamas agree that Israel has a right to exist, in peace, in its traditional homeland -- or the international community is prepared to force them to accept those conditions -- with whom can Israel legitimately negotiate? Doesn’t negotiating with insincere partners actually push everyone deeper into the abyss? If it seems that way to modern Jews it is because of the advanced education the Jewish people have received in these matters and for which we paid in blood 60 years ago.

There are enough negotiations and agreements already, if only the signatories would abide by them. Let us call for all people, all organizations, all religions and all nations to support the agreements and resolutions already in place -- and the return of the IDF soldiers whose abduction sparked the current situation.