It’s hard to be particularly excited about this week’s news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If I were an optimist, I might sunnily mention that Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated plans to withdraw settlers from the Gaza Strip and shorten the barrier/fence/wall. But as a committed cynic, I can only puzzle over his motivations (which probably don’t include a genuine desire for peace). Is he trying to secure a legacy? Improve his image in light of the bribery charges? Solicit American support, knowing that we’re increasingly nervous about looking anti-Arab?

Limitless pessimism has always been one of my character flaws, and I have long had a very cloudy view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution is clearly the only viable outcome, but the chances of getting there and making it work seem ludicrously small. Intransigent extremists control the majority in the middle, which is frightened and easily swayed into justifications of reprehensible behavior. How can it ever be settled? What kind of a world awaits my baby sisters, now just toddlers?

If I were a glass-half-full kind of girl, I might hail the resignation of 400 members from Palestinian Prime Minister Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement as a sign of dissatisfaction with the movement’s corrupt leadership and its inability to advance the peace process. Instead, I fret over the destabilization of Fatah and possible ascendancy of more radical elements like Hamas.

On some level, I acknowledge that throwing my hands up and crying “”Hopeless!”” is a cop-out. It enables me to turn away. I can’t be expected to devote my energies to a lost cause, can I? What’s on “”Friends”” tonight?

That said, I have a lot of respect for those who can maintain a positive outlook on the situation, those who forge on toward a solution instead of becoming discouraged and dispirited. We need more people unlike me, who believe they can make themselves heard above the clatter.

But it’s hard not to be disheartened when all around me there’s evidence of the same intransigence and manipulation that’s directly driving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There’s a silent tension on campus between Jewish and Muslim groups, which occasionally erupts into bitter displays of divisiveness, like the furor over 2001’s anti-Zionism week or last year’s flyer defacements. As intelligent young people, we should break down our inherited divisions, not strengthen them.

It’s no better among grown-ups, of course. My mother recently forwarded me an e-mail she’d received from one of her friends from temple. She knew me to be an urban legend buster and asked me to check out the message.

The e-mail, which had been circulating for some time among San Diego’s educated, personable, cheerful Jewish women, pointed out that while Muslims comprise some 20 percent of the world’s population, they had won just six Nobel Prizes; Jews (0.2 percent of the world’s population) have been awarded 161. “”Clearly, Arabs and Muslims need to focus more on education,”” the e-mail snidely suggested.

I was horrified. The statistics were factually correct, but the judgment of Arabs and Muslims as culturally inferior to Jews was appalling. I couldn’t believe that I had attended a dinner party at the home of the woman who’d found this e-mail worth passing along. If you asked this woman if she considered herself a racist or a religious bigot, she’d certainly say no, shocked that you had even considered the possibility.

But make no mistake: This e-mail plays upon the basest prejudices. It smacks of what I call the “”those people”” mentality. One group looks down its collective nose at another group, vilifying them as the ultimate “”other,”” completely foreign and totally homogenous. Sometimes it can be seemingly benign ó “”You know those Asians, with their good grades and strict parents”” ó but other times, decidedly more sinister. When the U.S. Postal Service released a stamp commemorating Muslim culture and festivals, my mom got another e-mail from her friend: “”Remember the Muslim bombing of PanAm Flight 103! Remember the Muslim bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993! Ö Remember the Muslim bombing of the USS Cole! Remember the Muslim attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001! Remember all the American lives that were lost in those vicious Muslim attacks!””

That was the last straw for Mom. She e-mailed her friend, firmly asking that she no longer be included in such e-dispatches, as she did not agree with their viewpoint and disapproved of their tone.

So I guess I should be optimistic about what lies in store for my baby sisters as they grow up. Yes, they’re bound to encounter intolerance and prejudice ó whether directed against them or exhibited by people who claim to be on their “”side”” ó but they will learn that this isn’t okay, and they don’t have to take it quietly.

The pessimism is hard to get over, though. While I find it adorable and a little strange when my sister Sadie, who is three, says the shabbat blessing over the candles, fumbling with the Hebrew and peeking through her fingers as she covers her eyes, I wonder what viewpoints will surround her, and how she’ll fare in their midst.

Claire can be reached between benders, bookishness and babysitting at [email protected].