Last Monday, Jews everywhere observed Yom Kippur by atoning for the past year's sins. Well, maybe not everywhere. In the Jewish state of Israel, most people (whether Jewish or not) probably celebrated this holiest of days by shooting each other or trying not to be shot. Certainly, this is tragic - especially considering the fact that of all the people in the world, those living in and around the Holy Land have the most atoning to do.

One man, Ariel Sharon, touched off this latest round of violence in the Middle East, which is being described as the worst in a decade. Sharon, an extremist Israeli politician and leader of the ultra-right wing opposition to Ehud Barak's government, seems to have made it his life's ambition to derail any hope of peace and compromise in the region. And with a little help from armed reactionaries and bigots on both sides, he seems to be accomplishing his goal.

It was Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, the historic site of the First and Second Temples, and one of the primary sticking points in the now defunct peace talks, that first provoked the violence. The site is presently the location of Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, two sacred Islamic shrines. Palestinians still remember Sharon as the man behind Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, and his mere presence was seen as an insult; it would be difficult to believe that the insult was not intended.

What followed the visit was (at present count) two weeks' worth of bombing, rock hurling, firefights between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police, and a number of outright murders. Though it is hard to point to a single incident as being the most depraved, the murder of twelve-year-old Mohammed Aldura by Israeli soldiers might well prove to be the one event that, more than any other, decimates the peace process. The possibility that this shooting was an accident does nothing to counter the fact that Palestinian politicians and rioters will almost certainly turn the boy into a martyr - and another excuse to escalate the violence.

"I brought a message of peace," claimed Sharon as the disorder spiraled out of control. "I believe that Jews and Arabs can live together." Perhaps Sharon has convinced himself of this, but he, his followers, and their Palestinian counterparts are doing everything in their power to ensure that Jews and Arabs don't live together.

When President Clinton ended the Camp David peace negotiations in August, it became clear that control over Jerusalem was the most problematic issue. The proposal that the city be jointly controlled by Israel and the new Palestinian state seemed, at first, a radical one.

But when one considers the extreme diversity of Jerusalem, it is hard to imagine that it could ever exist peacefully within one religious nation or the other. United Nations control over this holy metropolis would be ideal, but it seems rather unlikely that Israel would give up its sovereignty over Jerusalem to anyone.

Undoubtedly, Israelis and Palestinians, most of them anyway, want peace. But few are prepared to sacrifice anything to get it. Barak and Arafat can sign agreements and make promises, but in the end no one wants to enforce them. Palestinians and Israelis have shown repeatedly that they are incapable of living together; now they are incapable of agreeing on how to live apart. They struggle over Jerusalem and its religious monuments like children squabbling over a doll. They simply cannot share.

There seems to be only one option, then - force them to share. The UN started this mess by declaring Israeli statehood in 1948. The situation was somewhat similar to what would happen if illegal immigrants from Mexico suddenly declared their own sovereign state somewhere in the southwestern United States.

But the Jews in Israel now are not going to leave and it will be a long time before Israel and Palestine can unite into a single peaceful state. So perhaps, until that distant date, the UN can take the responsibility for cleaning up this mess. Unlike in previous proposals, however, the UN's job should not be to govern Jerusalem.

What is needed, rather, is for UN peacekeepers to occupy the region and enforce tolerance and peace. This theory is sort of like a grand-scale time-out - one year of military rule for each major setback in the peace process. Yes, this would be an affront to the democratic ideals the UN claims to espouse.

But people who slaughter each other over control of archaeological relics are clearly incapable of engaging in a meaningful democratic process. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians seem to value self-rule over everything else - including life.

So perhaps after a decade or so of foreign occupation, they will be ready to unite in a pursuit of freedom. Then they can have their sovereignty.