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EL CAJON — Violent episodes in the Middle East generate a political and religious argument in Jewish American homes, and the most recent Israeli-Arab conflict is no different. Whenever I find myself defending the Arab cause against my family or defending Israel against some of my liberal, non-Jewish friends, I always recount an adage that explains several paths for peace in the region.

There are three points to the triangle for peace in the Middle East. On one side there is a democracy, another there is a Jewish state, and the last there are Palestinian territories. You can have two of the points, but not all three.

I went out to lunch last Friday at Ali Baba, an Iraqi restaurant in east San Diego, with a Lebanese American and a Jewish American. I offered this adage to them to see if they found any new meaning to the words amid the escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon. If nothing else, I would at least get some decent baba ghanoush.

Samy Amanatullah, a third-year UC Santa Barbara student whose parents emigrated from Lebanon in the late 1970s, discussed his family’s frustration with Israel’s attack on Lebanon over the past three weeks. As parts of Beirut have been turned into rubble and many people have been displaced, Amanatullah holds all parties responsible for letting the situation get out of hand.

As a secular Arab, he denounced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call for the complete destruction of the Zionist state. Yet he also sees the religious dogma as more of a rallying cry for suddenly desperate and homeless Lebanese people searching for a way to stop the bombing.

“The perception of Hezbollah in the western world is that of a bunch of religious fanatics,” Amanatullah said. But the Lebanese military is nothing more than a police force, and many of the Lebanese see Hezbollah as a guerrilla militia that can defend the country against Israel.

However, Benji Cohen, a Jew from Houston, Texas, who joined the Israel Defense Force to give his life a “purpose, a direction,” looked at Middle Eastern foreign policy through a different set of snapshots. He said that Israel has never been the aggressor with neighboring Arab states and only acted in self-defense, even if the counterattack was overpowering.

Cohen points to the way Hezbollah has put the Lebanese people on the mantle of its cause, regardless of how most of Lebanon wanted nothing to do with this war.

“Hezbollah is holding the Lebanese people hostage because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,” said Cohen, referring to the land the United Nations has deemed to be Palestinian territory despite the Israeli occupation.

By the time Turkish coffee was brought to our table, Cohen made a stunningly hopeful observation.

“If I could make any plea for peace, it is this meal. All these people, the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Sunnis and the Shiites, they share the same food, the same history, the same culture.”

Given the demonization of the Israelis and the Arabs through the lens of Western media, it must be said that most of the region is comprised of people trying to eke out an existence. These families stretch across the disputed borders of the region and share more than just a culture of food; they share a culture of victimization, as all of the countries have faced the depths of persecution and brutality.

As I left the restaurant, I knew both Samy and Benji were justified in their beliefs, just as the Lebanese, the Palestinians and the Israelis have a just cause – to some extent.

But that’s not the point.

If there is one insurmountable obstacle for peace in the Middle East, it is the inability to let the wounds of history be healed and let go of a xenophobic ideology. Real peace must be built, not just the absence of war or isolation from one’s neighbors, because Arabs and Israelis are more culturally intertwined than either cares to admit.

If the Middle East is considered the cradle of three religious civilizations, the countries with conflicted pasts need to take a leap of faith.

If it can be done at an Iraqi joint in San Diego, then it must be done when the lives of millions on both sides are at stake.

E-mail de Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.