Is Containment Relevant?

Only four weeks have passed since the horror that I felt in view of the airplane penetrating the southern tower of the twins, since the explosions and the collapse of the Twin Towers released into the space an enormous cloud of dust and smoke, but also a huge number of emotional bits and pieces that spread all over the globe, reaching the Middle East, Israel and Tel-Aviv, where I live. These pieces penetrated us, stirring up waves of emotional reactions. Countries and nations had their official reactions; Israel for example changed - temporarily - the name of Kaplan St. near the Israeli ‘Pentagon’, into ‘Pentagon St.’ American and Israeli flags were raised side by side: we Israelis stand with and by you, our American friends. On a more personal level, listening to friends, colleagues, the man in the street, this wave of emotions had numerous wavelengths, shadings and turns. I didn't have to go far and had just to listen to myself, to pick up a rapidly changing stream of emotions and thoughts: at one moment the Israeli in me responded with deep sadness for a hurting ‘friend’; a moment later; America and others will now finally understand our predicament here with suicide attacks, and soon will ‘take care’ of the ‘evil’ around us. Then, the Israeli me, or perhaps the Jewish me felt that some blame will soon find its way towards us here. At other moments the past New Yorker awakened in me, identifying with the those living and working in New York, going to work and being caught in an unbelievable horror. For the first time I called American friends to find out how they were. Usually it has been the other way around, is this another ‘little sign’ that the world as we had known it has dramatically changed?

Simultaneously to all that, I glanced at others, how do they react? Our Palestinians neighbors - some of them - danced in the streets. I began then to wonder how much the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is being fueled not only by a national or a territorial conflict, but