buoying 復習

　イスラエル建国70周年に合わせ14日、イスラエルの米大使館をエルサレムに移転しました。

JERUSALEM — When Israel declared its independence in 1948, President Harry Truman rushed to recognize it. He took just 11 minutes, and Israelis, about to go to war to defend their infant state, were euphoric.

Seventy years to the day — and nearly as long since Israel declared the holy city of Jerusalem its “eternal capital” — the United States will formally open its embassy on a hilltop here two miles south of the Western Wall.

The embassy’s move from Tel Aviv and President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — reversing decades of American foreign policy — comes at a moment so fraught with both pride and peril that Israelis seem not to know what to feel.

Israelis find it hard to rejoice when they find themselves doing some of the same things they did back in 1948: listening for civil-defense sirens, readying bomb shelters and calling in reinforcements to confront threats to the north, south and east.

(中略)

Warming relations with Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states are even buoying hopes that Israel could begin to expand its tiny circle of friends in the region.

Monday’s move of the American mission to a fortified former consulate along the seam between East and West Jerusalem, from a beachfront bastion in Tel Aviv, is freighted with symbolism in manifold ways.

　buoying /búːing/ に注目しました。『ジーニアス英和辞典第5版』(大修館) をみてみると「〜に救命浮標をつける、(望みなどを) 繋げる、〜を支える」といった意味があります。『ケンブリッジ英英辞典』で定義を確認してみると ” to prevent someone or something from sinking“ とあり人やものが沈没しない様に支える役割を成すと窺えます。
　buoy は元々ラテン語で「足枷、鎖」などのニュアンスを伴う “boia” が語源とされているそうです。また “boia” から派生した語は英語の他に古フランス語で「鎖」という意味を持つ “buie” や中期オランダ語で「浮き輪」という意味を伴う “boeye” などが挙げられます。

　この政策はトランプ米政権が「親イスラエル・反イラン」の姿勢を改めて鮮明にした形となり、中東情勢の一層の不安定化を生み出していることを暗躍しています。(Happidra)