The Arab-Israeli dispute exasperated almost every secretary of state from John Foster Dulles on, and in one of his most exasperated moments he exclaimed, "Why can't the Jews and Muslims get along like good Christian gentlemen?"
This was an a historical observation simply because among Christian sects, especially in the Holy Land, there is very little gentlemanly behavior. Then and now.
We are reminded of this in a Sunday Associated Press dispatch about a fight on Palm Sunday in what is arguably Christianity's holiest shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
The church "is built over the site where tradition says Jesus was buried and resurrected." Greek Orthodox clergy came to blows with Armenian Orthodox priests and also pummeled Israeli police.
But it was a fight among Christians. In a pre-Christmas cleaning at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity last year, Armenian and Greek priests also fought over Jesus' birth grotto with brooms and stones.