Two years, two writers: a Palestinian and an Israeli perspective on the human cost of a terrible conflict

In October 2023, I told a grieving child the nightmare would pass. But war has become routine and the end feels impossibly out of reach

- Etgar Keret

This is hard to grasp, but it's been two years since 7 October 2023. Twenty-four months of dread and fury, 104 weeks of speeches about being a step away from total victory, 730 days of death and bombings and starvation. Time flies when it's standing still. Only two years ago, an entire nation watched helplessly as a nightmare emerged from the darkness, and now here we are. Instead of awaking from that chilling dream, we are living it as a perpetual, murderous reality - our new routine.

Two years of opening our eyes every morning to another day of hostages caged and starving in underground tunnels; another day of bombings, death and deprivation for men, women, children and the elderly in Gaza; another day of newspapers reporting the names of dead soldiers, continually expanding the vast circle of bereavement that threatens to swallow up everything.

On the beaches of Tel Aviv, the bodybuilders and paddleboarders keep up their rituals while distant sounds of explosions wash ashore like messages in bottles - muted news from Gaza that these beach-goers prefer to ignore. After all, we can't hear the screaming and crying all the way over here, and faraway blasts make a sound that - as it turns out - the human ear can easily grow accustomed to.

After two years, you can get used to anything. Especially when every passing day is so much like the previous one, and at night we lie awake counting living hostages, dead Gazans, and speeches dripping with hate and fear by a besieged leader who no one believes any more.

Today he promises that Israelis will live in a Sparta, waging eternal war, and you don't have to be a prophet to know that tomorrow he'll serve up the same dish of venom and dread, the bitter saltiness of sweat and blood, and the persecuted victimhood that has become Israel's invariable answer to any criticism.