A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELF A NATION ARE ONE:

Shortly after the Israeli occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli leaders realized that the one issue they should avoid was turning a political conflict into a religious one. In politics, there is room for give-and-take and a pragmatic approach to issues based on the balance of forces, but in a religious war, there is no room for compromise.

A lot of what we are seeing now is the result of the rise of a nationalist religious government that has taken Israel's political secular majority hostage, allowing religious radicals to call the shots and poison the air with words, actions and pogroms. 

Jewish supremacy has not been restricted to demeaning the Muslim population and forcing Jewish religious nationalist views on the Al-Aqsa complex, the third holiest mosque in Islam. This mindset has filtered into a dangerous anti-Christian indoctrination that has manifested in the last year in increasing attacks against priests, nuns, pilgrims and churches.

Add to all that a total lack of effort to find a political solution that might end the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

The violence erupted suddenly Saturday morning -- but comes after a year of rising tensions between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which has been under a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade since 2007. This year alone has seen a spate of deadly attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories, an escalation that followed Netanyahu's move to cobble together the most far-right government in Israeli history.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and carried out Saturday's attacks, said the operation was in response to the blockade, as well as recent Israeli military raids in the West Bank and violence at al-Aqsa Mosque, a disputed religious site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

"Enough is enough," the leader of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, said in a recorded message Saturday, the Associated Press reported. "Today the people are regaining their revolution."

As of Sept. 19, before Saturday's outbreak of violence, 227 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli troops or settlers this year, according to U.N. figures, with most of those deaths -- 189 -- occurring in the West Bank. At least 29 Israelis, mostly in the West Bank, were also killed this year as of the end of August, according to the same U.N. database.

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