It woke me shortly after I dropped off to sleep in the early minutes of Saturday morning, causing the windows of our apartment above the Hinnom Valley to drone with a humming sound, and vibrating the mattress beneath me.
The quake was minor, bit it effectively ended what little hope I had of catching a brief nap before the shuttle came to fetch me to the airport on the first leg of my flight to Annapolis.
Situated in an unstable part of the world (geographically, I mean this time), the ancient homeland of the Jewish people straddles two tectonic plates in the Syria-Africa Rift, meaning Israel is no stranger to earthquakes.
Seismologists say they are happening all the time, especially down under the floor of the Dead Sea Valley.
Most of the shivers are just that, shivers, felt barely if at all as we carry on with the never-uneventful life in this land.
But once or twice a year one comes along that is strong enough to momentarily stop us in our tracks, and to make the breaking news headlines in The Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, and YNetnews.
Interestingly, some seem to be “tied” to political earthquakes. I recall one that shook our apartment in Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighborhood on November 22, 1996, the day Prime Minister Shimon Peres presented his super-leftist government to the Knesset following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
And on February 11, 2004, a size 5 quake cracked the ceiling in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament building, shortly before lawmakers were scheduled to take their seats for the day’s debates. As reported by Jerusalem Newswire at the time, the question of forcefully removing the Jews from the Gaza Strip was then on the top of the Knesset’s agenda.
This week we have had three reported quakes and felt two. It is the week leading up to the Annapolis Conference on the Creation of a Palestinian State on Jewish Land.
Of course, no-one would be foolish enough to say there was REALLY any tie in between the quakes and the conference.
Would they?
Well, time to board my plane! I hate leaving Israel, but it’s only for five days this time.
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