On March 6, 2008 the vicious cycle of bloodshed that has defined the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict manifested itself once again. An armed Palestinian gunman entered into the library of a religious school in West Jerusalem and opened fire on students, killing eight and wounding even more. Though some Palestinians found this justified because most of the victims were settlers, this represents a horrific logic.

As despicable and tragic as these murders were, it is important to remember that this wasn't an isolated incident -- it was part of a larger cycle of violence going back one century. It cannot be divorced from Israel's history of aggression and occupation or Palestinian rejection of it. Nor should we ignore America's damaging role in the region.

In light of the recent Israeli bombardment of Gaza - a stretch of land largely populated by refugees from pre-Israel Palestine - it is necessary to recognize that misery has no flags and no borders. Such violence is not the cause, but the symptom of the core issue.

So what is this conflict all about? Some see it as a religious issue. These people are partially right: Israel was established as a Jewish state on a land populated by Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews. Much later, after secular resistance parties failed the Palestinians, an "Islamic" resistance formed. However, Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms continue to be based more in secular nation-state principles than in religious ideologies.

Some argue that the hostility is about land. These people are partially right as well since Israel was given permission by the United Nations in 1947 to form a Jewish state on a majority of the historic Palestine. This decision was made in spite of the fact that Zionist land ownership comprised an estimated 6 percent of Palestine and that the Jewish people never actually exhibited a demographic majority over the indigenous Palestinians. Clearly, the Arabs of Palestine had no incentive to accept the UN decision to partition their land. After Israel's War of Independence in 1948, Israel expanded its borders to include nearly 78 percent of Palestine after an estimated 700,000 Palestinian refugees fled from or were forcibly displaced by Zionist aggression and intimidation. To this day, Israel still expropriates Palestinian land through settlement construction, expansion and home demolition.

However, the best explanation for the Israeli-Palestinian impasse revolves around the idea of social justice, namely equality. Israel was founded by Jews fleeing persecution. These people wanted a state to protect them from European anti-Semitism and to gain collective equality with other peoples in the world. Their flaw was seeking to establish a state in a place where other people lived and had their own national aspirations. The creation of Israel as a homeland for the Jews inherently negated the Palestinians' fundamental right to freedom, equality and self-determination.

In 1939, Mahatma Gandhi responded to a request for support of the state of Israel from the philosopher Martin Buber by writing, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."

One can also learn by applying other historical examples. America's experiences with having a "white state" in a multi-racial land led to slavery and racial violence. Instead of learning from other cases, like those in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Algeria, people still treat Israel-Palestine violence either as "ahistorical" or historically inevitable, without seeing the basic problem: systematic inequality that prioritizes Israeli "security" over Palestinian rights.

Israel must recognize the equal rights of the millions of Palestinians living under its rule and fix the history of injustice. Palestinians must cease violent tactics aimed at ridding an occupying force and adopt a strategy of co-existence.