It is part of a shared history of violence and counterviolence, he said.

The product of this situation is a Basque country characterized by violence and counterviolence, as well as civil conflict.

The I.R.A. has promised venegance, but Mr. Feeney stresses how counterviolence made things worse during past terror.

Father Ellacuria was one of several Central American liberation theologians who advocated revolutionary counterviolence to the poor and oppressed of El Salvador.

But there is little evidence that the Israelis have trained their soldiers to handle renewed violence any differently than they did in the past, when they used counterviolence to subdue the rioters.

It is from that font that the fury on the Palestinian side flows, Arab leaders argue, and they insist that no amount of Israeli counterviolence can stem it.

He described Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians as "morally repugnant" and said that "the Palestinians have played their full part in the escalating cycle of violence, counterviolence and revenge."

"As we have said since this violence and counterviolence began," she declared, "there is a need for restraint by all parties and a common commitment to deal with the underlying problems and frustrations."

The senators said they supported Mr. Shultz's latest "effort to break the dangerous Middle East stalemate, a stalemate that has led to the current cycle of violence and counterviolence."

Among those endorsing the Red Army Faction's proposal was the Kolnische Rundschau, which said it might be "the only way to break out of the spiral of violence and counterviolence."

"It can further the violence and counterviolence and revenge killings, because people may seek justice outside the judicial system," said Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the United Nations human rights office in Iraq.

It reflected official concern that protests and even counterviolence by settlers could inflame opposition to continuing peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization just when the Government was assuring Israelis that everything is going well.

Speaking after the first suicide bombing, Ahmed Qurei, whom Mr. Arafat has nominated to be the Palestinian prime minister, expressed "our regrets and pain" for "innocent lives" lost "as a result of violence and counterviolence."

After a Jordanian Cabinet meeting, Information Minister Marwan Muasher read a statement that said: "Jordan is following with concern the latest escalation in the situation and the military operations which might return Iraq to the cycle of violence and counterviolence.

He blamed the violence on "a lack of clear vision needed to reach peace" on the part of the Israeli government, charging that "its use of violence, blockades and closing of borders in an attempt to oppress the Palestinian people leads to a vicious circle of indefinite violence and counterviolence."

To sojourn in the Holy Land these days is to be pitched into a miasma of mutual political recriminations, of action and reprisal, of a spiral of mutual dehumanization and cruelty, of violence and counterviolence, all to a point that sanity and compassion seem at risk of being lost.