For the first time in their history as neighbors, Israelis and Syrians are talking about what they can share as common goals, listening to each other as partners rather than as adversaries.

On both sides, those out of power are opposed to the move; expecting treachery to burst bloodily into the open at every turn of this long and winding road to a new era. On the fringes, they can't hide their disappointment that the violence is dwindling; the more diplomatic, if not responsible, stake increasingly desperate claims to isolationist ideologies, at a time when isolationism is increasingly impossible.

These are the people who refuse to recognize that despite all the differences of race, religion, or sex; despite wealth and despite poverty, we are inexorably moving toward a global community in which the 'net will be the platform for our survival as humanity on the planet.

Half the world's population, it's said, has yet to make a phone call. But half of them will by the year 2020 -- and it will be on a cellular phone, probably with a video connection. The 20th century began with the Industrial Revolution and began coming to an end with the race to full bandwidth.

Like Solomon, who said there was nothing new under the sun, to Yeats who could not have forseen that his great beast slouching toward Bethlehem would be a bulldozer slicing a few more thousand meters off the stone and shrub hillsides of the Judean Mountains to build a bypass road to Jerusalem, nobody could have forseen a machine that would be an unlimited reservoir for all the information in the world, no matter how significant or trivial.

In that sense, it's difficult to decide whether the brouhahas of legislation and warning around the world regarding the 'net -- and ways to censor it -- are tragic or comic. Tragic, because of the wasted time on the issue. Comic, because those looking for ways to censor the 'net obviously don't know what it's about, if they believe it can be censored -- or even regulated. The only thing that can regulate what's on the 'net is the free marketplace of ideas.

It's good the talks between the Israelis and Syrians are taking place in America, where it is possible to drive for three days in any direction without being stopped by passport control, let alone mine fields. King Solomon ruled successfully over this tiny corner of the world by making the Land a commercial bridge to all the cultures around his kingdom. Judging from the host of projects on the table for regional infratsuctural development, ranging from connecting electrical grids to solving water scarcity, those making the progress in the peace talks look like they've taken a lesson from him. It's also good that the first informal talks between Israel and Syria took place in the last week of the Chrsitian calendar's year, in that season of goodwill between Christmas and New Year, by which time a resolution for self-improvement is usually made.

Back in 1988's Christmas season, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the air, the intifada just a year old, there was a whiff of goodwill in the air, quickly dispersed by grumpy refusals on Yitzhak Shamir's part to recognize that anything in this world was changing. The Arabs were the same Arabs, the sea was the same sea. They still want to throw us into it, he said then -- and that message is still the heart of the complaints coming from the opponents of the peace process -- whose numbers are dwindling daily on both sides of the borders that are opening like windows of opportunity for all of us in this part of the world.

There is a curious phenomenon nowadays at soc.culture.jewish and soc.culture.israel, as well as in some of the Arab usenet groups. Rabid Arab-(and Muslim) haters and Rabid Jew-(and Israeli) haters pair off in flamewars that can reach heights of passion more reminiscent of well-written pornography than of politial debate.

The mockery of these flamewars becomes part of the usenet experience, and on the sidelines of the argument, new and tentative 'net friendships are being made between "moderates" from both sides who regard peace as the pragmatic choice precisely because it is based on a recognition of a common morality to all the religions -- and to democracy -- the equality of humankind before the enormity of the cosmos.

Resentment of past enemies is a luxury that only those afraid of the future can afford. Meanwhile, in Maryland -- and Bethlehem -- those readying for the future, are learning that in this fast-changing age of transformation, patience pays off in negotiation, if you try to shape the deal as a win-win situation.