It's fashionable, these days, to call Tel Aviv a bubble*. It's a city that has, for the past few years, insisted on maintaining the illusion that it is just like any liberal Western European city, or like New York - but with better weather. Like most people here, I stopped talking about politics a couple of years ago. The reality was so awful, so unbearably hopeless, that it just seemed to take up too much of our emotional energy. We couldn't relate to what was going on in the news, so we stopped paying attention. When we read the daily newspapers, we skipped directly to the arts and leisure section. Like snails, we pulled our heads into our shells.

But then, over the last month, I was pulled out of the bubble. I went to Gush Katif, twice. I went to Amman, and last week I crossed the Qalandiyah checkpoint and spent the afternoon in Ramallah. I listened to the stories of Israelis and Palestinians, and after awhile they all started to merge together into one big tale of suffering.

They kicked us out of our homes. They're going to kick us out of our homes. Look, this is where I got shot in the stomach. Look, this is where I lost a chunk of my shin when a mortar landed in my garden. My boyfriend was shot and killed while trying to drag his mentally retarded brother away from a violent demonstration. My neighbour's daughter was killed by a shell while playing outside. We really want peace, but they only understand violence. We want peace, but we're losing hope.

The cacophany in my head reminds me of the first time I sat down to meditate, at a Zen monastery in a wooded area of Upstate New York. Together with about 40 other people, I sat on a cushion in the silent zendo, cupped my right hand in my left hand in front of my pelvis, and watched my breath. We had been instructed to count in rounds of 10 breaths; if any thoughts floated into our heads before we reached 10, we should stop and start counting again.

It took me three days to get past two.

Last week I started to feel anxious and depressed, because I was stuck on two again. I suppose I wouldn't feel this way if I were some grizzled old combat reporter who just came from Baghdad or Kabul - the kind who spends his downtime drinking bourbon and comparing "how strange these natives be" tales with other journalists at the bar in the American Colony Hotel. Unlike them, I have a stake in all that's happening here, and I care.

I told all this to a friend of mine, an Israeli guy who works as a press photographer for a major wire service. He has photographed practically every violent incident that occured in this area over the past few years, so I figured he'd understand. He did. Then he told me that his employer wanted to send him to China for three years. And that he'd probably accept the job, even though he knows he'll be really homesick. Because he's pretty tired.

*This post is dedicated to Hadas.