At first, the article in The Jerusalem Post last week seemed like the same old, same old: A picture of a ransacked Israel Defense Forces post in the West Bank. Then a quote from Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon: “The State of Israel will not tolerate such criminal activity, which is terrorism in all respects.” Those Palestinians will never quit.

Oh, wait a minute. Yaalon wasn’t talking about Palestinian terrorists. He was talking about Jewish terrorists, renegade settlers, who slashed the tires of an I.D.F. jeep parked in the settlement of Yitzhar, after Israeli soldiers came to demolish illegal buildings. “Settlers clashed with security forces during Monday night’s demolition and lightly injured six officers,” The Post reported. “A group of 50 to 60 settlers then raided an army post located to the west of the settlement, destroying generators, army equipment, heaters and diesel fuel tanks.” Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, warned that extremist settlers had crossed a line: “An ideology has flourished that does not recognize the rule of law, that does not recognize us or what we represent.”

These small stories tell a bigger one: We’re not dealing anymore with your grandfather’s Israel, and they’re not dealing anymore with your grandmother’s America either. Time matters, and the near half-century since the 1967 war has changed both of us in ways neither wants to acknowledge — but which the latest impasse in talks only underscores.

Israel, from its side, has become a more religious society — on Friday nights in Jerusalem now you barely see a car moving on the streets in Jewish neighborhoods, which only used to be the case on Yom Kippur — and the settlers are clearly more brazen. Many West Bank settlers are respectful of the state, but there is now a growing core who are armed zealots, who will fight the I.D.F. if it tries to remove them. You did not go to summer camp with these Jews. You did not meet them at your local Reform synagogue. This is a hard core.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/opinion/not-the-same-old-same-old.html

"The truth is Kerry’s mission is less an act of strategy and more an act of deep friendship. It is America trying to save Israel from trends that will inevitably undermine it as a Jewish and democratic state. But Kerry is the last of an old guard. Those in the Obama administration who think he is on a suicide mission reflect the new U.S. attitude toward the region. And those in Israel who denounce him as a nuisance reflect the new Israel.

Kerry, in my view, is doing the Lord’s work. But the weight of time and all the changes it has wrought on the ground may just be too heavy for such an act of friendship. If he folds his tent, though, Israelis and Palestinians will deeply regret it, and soon."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/opinion/not-the-same-old-same-old.html?_r=0