By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

The land is so contentious and the stakeholders there and worldwide so passionate, that crafting the headline, even naming the PNA before Israel makes one hesitate.

Is this issue, (this place, these two nations, both unrecognized by some…this sacred land to many and the people living there) not the most pressing issue for American foreign policy development and diplomacy?

So many physical, psychological, religious, and economic struggles and campaigns have at their basis the co-existence, survival or destruction of Israel or Palestine. Conversely the strugglers and supporters work in their own ways to preserve the ideas and the “foundations” of these two nations and their peoples. We can tie so many issues to this land and what it symbolizes for so many around the world.

Is this ongoing crisis simply too complex to handle at its core? In other words do we continue to nibble around the edges of this crisis because it’s easier to do so than to make this area the keystone of diplomatic effort?

Clear but perhaps unpopular foreign policy decisions will emerge from the Oval Office soon; troop levels and strategy for Afghanistan, increased foreign aid for Pakistan, careful exit logistics for Iraq, continued vigilant operations to counter and confront terror cells domestically and world-wide.

How much of this seemingly Islamic-based passion for struggle is really based upon the struggle of the Palestinian people? And is not Israel’s survival on the mind of every Jew worldwide? Are Christians not concerned with their Holy Land?

From such a small patch of dirt, so many complex and elegant threads of culture and belief, of history and promise for the future…is it connected to other struggles or is it distinct? Is the search for a central issue a futile one?

There are many reasons why President Obama will continue to step aside from this core crisis. Those reasons will probably be catalogued by responders below and there is ample blank space for opinion. But the central question posed here is:

How would a focused US diplomatic peace effort, one as the central core of our foreign policy, affect prospects for peace elsewhere?