During my last few weeks in the UK before moving to Israel, a little under two and a half years ago, a vivid scene repeatedly played over in my head. I saw a ballroom, filled with waltzing couples, young, dressed in regular clothes but wearing masquerade masks. The ballroom looked as you would expect: wooden floors, plush furnishings, elaborate lampshades on the walls – except that two perpendicular walls and the ceiling were missing, and all that lay beyond were black space and stars. Still, the couples kept up their waltz, seemingly oblivious to – or ignoring – the fact that they were dancing at the edge of the world.

This vision presented itself frequently until I arrived in Israel, at which point it stopped. To this day I haven’t been able to fathom where it came from, but I thought then – as I still do – that it was a rather fantastical metaphor for life in Israel/Palestine, and its society (or societies) that remain perched on the edge, its inhabitants either ignoring or resisting the abyss around their feet and above their heads. Now, as rockets spill and words detonate, as shootings and beatings mount, as fissures gape open in Jerusalem and Gaza is stripped to its bones in a futile mission whose only certainty is that there will be blood, I find myself returning to that scene from two and a half years ago. In the black hole that opened following the murders of three Israeli teenagers and the torturing to death of one Palestinian teenager, boundaries and limits apparently disappeared, sucked in by rage and the desire for revenge. Incitement, mob attacks, civil unrest – all have burst far and wide in the past month, and now we have a grim, one-sided war unfolding before us, crushing the fragile introspection that had begun in the wake of the violent racism unleashed by the kidnappings and murders. The Gaza conflict provides the latest distraction to keep everyone occupied, either mentally or physically; Israel, at once exploding and boxed in, is exercising its power and avoiding exorcising its demons. In turn, the walls and ceilings around us are crumbling, not only figuratively but literally – and with devastating frequency since the start of the Gaza operation. Once again the tense, impossible arithmetic of this land, of 48 plus 67, has been overrun by blood and the tears that follow. We are on the edge, with the ground beneath our feet but a void above and around us. It is time we look into it and start to work out where the boundaries are to be re-established, before we get swallowed up completely.

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A few days ago, following an evening of dull thuds and booms that rattled my office building, the midnight walk home from work was quiet – under my sky, at least, not that other sky in the south, still crowded and wailing. Ahead of me, a few young people were ambling along in good spirits; pausing before crossing a road, they turned their heads to check for oncoming traffic and for the first time I saw their faces – or rather I didn’t, for they were wearing masquerade masks. The blackness and the stars hung above us, watching, waiting, as we all are during these days. In my head, I remembered young people, masked, carrying on as normal amid an oblivion. In a waltz, as others flee.