If you had parachuted into Tel Aviv in October 2000, didn't know Hebrew and had no knowledge of current events, you wouldn't have noticed anything amiss. The cafes and shops remained full, the high-tech industry continued to flourish, people got up, sent the kids to school and went to work, all as if nothing were happening.

But it was a terrible month. For the first two weeks the intifada was contained in the occupied territories - which seemed far away, although they could be reached in an hour by car. But those violent events spelled the end of - well, in retrospect it seems like a dream, but at the time it felt like having one of life's certainties proved wrong. Like seeing the Berlin wall being rebuilt, or apartheid re-instated in South Africa. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict was supposed to be over, for God's sake! How could this be happening? How could we be going backward like this - seven years backward?

For hours on end, I sat with groups of friends and watched the news on television. Everyone wanted to be among friends, but we couldn't tear ourselves away from the news coverage. So we watched together. The shooting, the killing, the horrifying siege of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, when a group of soldiers were trapped for days under severe Palestinian fire, before finally being evacuated. It was all violence, all the time, brought to us live by our local and foreign news services. We drank too much coffee and smoked too many cigarettes as we sat on chairs grouped around the television screen, leaning forward anxiously. We groaned at the sensationalistic foreign news coverage, that was full of factual errors, delivered dramatically by reporters who looked ridiculous in their flack jackets and helmets. The events of October 2000 were the top story on all the foreign news networks, which ran continuing coverage that deviated from their normal broadcasting schedules.

Except for on October 5, when crowds stormed the Serbian parliament building in Belgrade and Slobodan Milosevic was ousted. And do you want to hear something crazy and perverse? We were pissed off that Israel was bumped to second place in the news that day. What? said one friend, only half-jokingly, Suddenly we're not important anymore?

I was at home alone on October 12, the day of the lynch. I'd just showered, and was still wrapped in a towel when suddenly I felt an urge to turn on the television news. I'm not trying to say that it was some spooky sixth sense; I'd simply become addicted to watching the bang-bang. It was like watching the second plane crash into the World Trade Centre: you hate yourself for watching it over and over, 'cause it seems morbid and sort of pornographic, but you just can't stop. But what I saw literally made me scream. Out loud. And I'm not a drama queen, trust me. A huge crowd of cheering people was standing outside the police station in Ramallah, watching while two Israeli reserve soldiers were beaten to death. While the police stood by and did nothing. It was all happening in real time, as I watched. I saw the man who stood at the window and showed his blood-covered hands to the crowd, saw the body of one of the reservists tossed from the second floor. It was the most barbaric thing I'd ever seen. But I was so shocked that my Hebrew - which was still a bit shaky in those days - deserted me. I called my friend Danny, a nice guy I'd had a brief "please help me get over my ex" fling with in Thailand, and, trying to keep my voice calm, ordered him to turn on the television. Immediately. And explain what was going on.

Oh my God, he said. Oh my God. They're killing them.


And that's when I understood how deep the hatred went among some Palestinians. Not all, obviously. It's just dumb to villify a whole nation because of the behaviour of a few. But that psychotic, murderous rage frightened me badly. I understood that things were way out of control, and that the existence of that kind of hatred meant that not everyone was in love with peace.

In mid-October the violence came a lot closer to home. There were riots in Jaffa, and in several Arab villages in the Galilee, where the police opened fire and killed several people. I don't want to go into the politics of those events. The reason I bring them up is to emphasize the growing sense of fear, of being under siege. The streets outside my apartment didn't feel safe to walk on the night there were riots in Jaffa, just a few minutes' walk away. And that seemed just incredible. Once again I was hanging out with friends, when one acquaintance walked into the apartment alone. How did you get here? we asked her anxiously. I walked! she said, in a "what's the big deal" tone. You walked!! we shouted at her. Alone?! Are you crazy? Listen, she said, relax, the streets are quiet. Yes, we said, but for how long?

Politically, things were deteriorating rapidly. But the economy was not really affected until the following year. That's when two things happened: the global market for high tech, already shaky since the stock crash in April 2000, finally crashed, and the suicide bombings began.

NEXT: Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it does. Living with daily suicide bombings. The high tech market crashes, taking my start up with it and leaving me unemployed and broke. Unemployment rises to 12%. Tourism comes to an all-but-total halt, making Tel Aviv feel eerily isolated - even as the nightlife and cultural life go through an amazing period of development that is reminiscent of Weimar Berlin. Passover 2002 and Operation Defensive Shield. And I decide to accept a job offer in Tokyo.