BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'DEATH AS A WAY OF LIFE'
After the Oslo agreement came the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the election of the hard-line Benjamin Netanyahu, the rise of Ehud Barak and his willingness to explore points of accommodation never before offered, the agonizing failure to reach agreement, the second intifada with its suicide bombings, Ariel Sharon's electoral victory and the all-out triumph of noise.

"Noise . . . gunshots and shouts, incendiary words and mournful laments, and explosions and demonstrations, and heaps of clichés and special broadcasts from the scenes of terrorist attacks, and calls for revenge. . . .

"And within that whirlwind, in the eye of the storm, there is silence. It can't be heard; it is felt, in every cell of the body. A silence such as one feels in the brief moment between receiving bad news and comprehending it, between the blow and the pain. This is the empty space in which every person, Israeli or Palestinian, knows with piercing certainty all that he does not want or does not dare to know."

The temptation is to flee back to the noise, because the silence is unbearable. "There, laid bare, stripped of any national, religious, tribal or social garments that protect him, a man sits alone, curled up inside himself."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/21/books/21EDER.html