Commentary: Extremists on both sides of Israel-Hamas War are determined to kill a two-state solution

When our family lived in Jerusalem in the mid-1990s — where I was working as the Tribune’s Middle East correspondent — we were awed by the hope among both Israelis and Palestinians that the 1993 Oslo Accords might end their age-old conflict. The agreement signed on the White House lawn that year gave real hope for peace in modern times.

Then an extremist Jewish settler slaughtered 29 Palestinian men and boys as they knelt in prayer in a Hebron mosque in 1994. Hamas suicide bombers blew up buses to butcher Israelis on Jerusalem’s streets. A Jewish extremist shot and killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv in 1995. People on both sides overwhelmingly supported the Oslo process, but hateful extremists in each camp refused to share the Holy Land. So, they started killing Oslo. Thirty years later, its promise remains on life support.

Today, new extremists on both sides are determined to drive nails into any possible peaceful resolution to the conflict and the dream of a two-state