THE PRIDE of the Israeli military wears flip-flops, hair dye and baggy green fatigues with a loose belt slung well below the waistline. At 19, she monitors the Gaza border by computer screen, her voice over the radio the first pressure on the trigger of an airstrike.

She is proof that one of the world’s most powerful fighting machines requires certain but not total compromise with teenage sartorial traits; and also the embodiment of why, despite its military strength and social gell, the military can be one of Israel’s psychological weaknesses.

In the Nahal Oz military base, a Qassam rocket’s arc from Gaza, the exclusively teenage women are chosen to sift camera pictures from across the divide because they concentrate better than their male counterparts. For this skill, their three years of largely sedentary service is also likely to leave them an average 5kg heavier.

A conscript army, by definition, takes all sorts. A few hours later the couple on late night patrol in Jerusalem’s old city look more like a shy courting couple than a military operation. Hands in pockets, rifles hanging from their backs ignored, they chat bashfully. (Not so the older, sharper characters who play with their sniper’s red dot on the backs of late-night idlers. But they too look bored.)

A few more hours, and a couple of their comrades on the Lebanese border were kidnapped. The swift Israeli bombing of airport runways, roads and bridges was in part to try to ensure that they are not by now in Iran.

Their names meant nothing to anyone but family and friends. But everyone knows these people; they are next door’s cousin, everyone’s son, everyone’s daughter.

• IT IS not yet called the George W. Bush tour, but it should be. As an aspirant president, Mr Bush was whisked above Israel by helicopter to be shown the size of the country. It worked. He often reminds audiences that at its narrowest point, Israel is just nine miles wide.

  From the air, a Martian who had read the scriptures would immediately recognise these craggy hillocks giving way to desert as the Holy Land. There are few trees, little calming shade on either side.

  Israel is indeed small, a little larger than Wales, though significantly larger than the West Bank and Gaza. But what strikes from the air is not so much size but two people divided by architecture. Even where two communities live cheek by jowl, they belong to different worlds.

  Palestinian homes are cement-coloured, flat-roofed boxes creating dusty sprawl. Israeli communities are planned, irrigated, red-tiled.

  We were in the air as the bombardment of Lebanon began. Here we saw Israel’s vulnerability, there we watched its might; not mutually exclusive, just parts of the conundrum.

• BOTH sides employ linguistic gymnastics for their ends. A young Israeli captain used a straight face to say of the security barrier that it was “more appropriate to refer to it as an obstacle”.

  To be accurate, it is for most of its journey along the border with, and into, the West Bank, a fence. Except where it runs close to a Palestinian community, where it is a wall. But on reflection, he was right. Transparent or not, an obstacle it most certainly is, in so many senses.

• FOR context, there are few better views than from the heart of old Jerusalem. Behind the Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred spot, Abraham obeyed God and laid out Isaac for sacrifice. A few feet above is where Muhammad went up to God and returned with instructions that Muslims should pray five times a day. A few degrees to the right is where Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives to sit with God. A few rocks, three traditions, all in one shapshot.

  Two of these traditions may dominate Middle East conflict, but Christianity is hardly a role model of brotherly love. The custodians of the Holy Sepulchre, site of Christ’s crucifixion, are sufficiently divided by denomination that a Muslim has for generations held the keys.

  Then there are the US evangelicals who beat a path to Jerusalem “with light in their eyes”, according to one who shows them the sights. Their fervent support for Israel comes with an edge: they yearn for its people to control the Promised Land, a prerequisite for the Second Coming; but Jews will then have to convert or be damned. As if this country doesn’t have enough trouble without having to contend with another after-life scenario.

Times Recommends

• Resist urge to throw voters red meat
• Slay sacred cows and be candid
• We cannot let these 100 deaths deflect us