Can we fight for peace?

Israelis very often confuse being orderly with being just, asserts Israeli peace activist Avner Wishnitzer, co-founder of the Combatants for Peace organization, started by Palestinians and former Israeli soldiers who have renounced violence for peaceful activism.

With the kidnappings of Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gil-Ad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, and the IDF's Operation Brother's Keeper to bring them home, Wishnitzer's remarks come on the heels of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statement that in the process of self-defense, there will occasionally be innocent victims.

"I agree that we don't [intend to kill]," says Wishnitzer, crediting Netanyahu's statement that the IDF has no intention of deliberately harming any innocent Palestinians.

But, Wishnitzer criticizes that "we intend to rule, and anyone who goes against this intention risks their life. The numbers speak for themselves."

A former IDF officer who served in the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, as a reservist Wishnitzer refused to serve in the Palestinian territories. In Combatants for Peace, his Palestinian counterpart is Sulaiman Khatib, who was jailed in Israel at age 14 for trying to stab IDF soldiers, lightly injuring them, and after 10 and a half years of imprisonment, turned to nonviolent resistance and became a determined peace activist.

The kidnappings have brought up many issues surrounding the conflict - failures by the Israeli government, failures of the Palestinian Authority, the spectacular failure of the peace talks - and have the power to derail any progress made between the two sides towards coexistence and communication. While Israelis have launched the online #BringBackOurBoys campaign to gain world attention and support for the three yeshiva students, Palestinians launched a counter-campaign, using similar language to bring to light the number of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

The Jerusalem Post spoke with Wishnitzer and Khatib in an attempt to understand the challenges facing those who continue to search for peace, the inevitable setbacks and the issues to be confronted.

KHATIB POINTS OUT that while PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the kidnapping and the PA is cooperating with Israeli security to find the three boys, Netanyahu has not apologized for the deaths of Palestinians who were killed in subsequent raids in the West Bank, nor for the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers prior to the kidnappings.

"Neither kid...