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Before the storm We live in a suburb north of Tel Aviv. On our roof, from the west, you can see the blue line of the seashore. From the east, you can see the hills of Samaria, over the "green line" marking the West Bank. I take overseas visitors up there to show how narrow Israel is. But this was the first time in nine years that I heard the sounds of warfare. I logged into the net: sure enough, Palestinian gunmen fired on an IDF position near Kalkilya, some seven miles away. The IDF returned fire with two tank shells. None (of our side) injured. This morning, when I walked out of my apartment building, the nearby main street was oddly quiet. Policemen were walking in the middle of the road, stopping traffic, shooing away pedestrians behind nearby buildings. One cop comforted a small child of six or so. A "suspicious object" had been discovered. I knew the drill: the sappers are called in; they check the object with a robot. Sometimes they'll shoot it. I went to work by a different route. When I got to work, I called my wife. She was relieved to hear me. Did you hear the explosion? Just after you left. Did you see it? You're OK? I told her it was probably a controlled explosion. The sappers do that sometimes. Otherwise it would be on the news. She told me that bombs had been discovered and defused in Herzliya, and Petach Tikva. Since the suicide bomber killed the shoppers in nearby Netanya, everyone's on edge. The previous night, a Palestinian had dropped into a crowded Jerusalem pub where he frequently visited, selling nargilas, water pipes. This time he left behind a primed pipe bomb. The owner of the pub found it in time. It exploded in the street, shattering car and store windows down the block. We become desensitized. There is a hypnotic effect of spiraling violence. Each time the situation escalates a notch - the Palestinians fire mortars, the IDF enters Area A, the air force flattens a block of Nablus - you briefly note the new tune, but it blends in against the rising background noise. I find myself watching impassively as the corpses and the body parts and the disfigured children are paraded before my eyes. When we first launched israelinsider in February, our designer proposed a tank image to symbolize our Security channel. That struck me as exaggerated. Tanks were used, and fired, only in rare instances. Now tanks are the entry-level armament. Tank shellings - and mortars for that matter - rarely make the bulletins anymore. It's old news already. In the Israeli springtime there are days when a hot wind blows from the East, carrying desert dust and bringing ultra-high pressure, covering the cars with a fine yellow powder. The sky slowly sickens into a weird yellow-brown. There's no breeze. They call it hamsin. In Arabic it means fifty: there are evidently places where people endure this for fifty days each year. They say the hamsin can drive men mad. The air becomes so oppressive that change--any change-- brings blessed relief. When the hamsin finally breaks, the winds can turn suddenly violent. Trees can fall, and power lines. This Spring, it seems, we've had a hamsin each week. Today the weather is brilliant, a perfect spring day. Yesterday on the Sabbath, it was the same clear blue sky with a light breeze and the smell of flowers and grain. War could not have seemed further away. This morning, a bomb scare on my block. This evening, the sound of machine guns and tank shells. I guess it started like this in the parts of Israel that have since become the background noise of the news, exchanges of fire and violence as commonplace as traffic reports. A roadside charge in Gush Katif. Sniping on Psagot. Tracer fire against Gilo. The first time they heard the sounds, it must have been a shock. Then it became a routine, a condition that ebbs and flows, slowly but imperceptibly getting worse, a condition to be discussed but accepted. I guess we'll get used to it, like the weather. They say there may be another hamsin on the
weekend. How much of this can we take? But every hamsin must eventually
break.
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