Middle East diary: Divided nation

Mea Sherim is the neighbourhood for the ultra-Orthodox

By Paul Wood BBC Middle East correspondent in Bethlehem

On the fourth day of his diary for BBC News Online, Paul Wood is in Jerusalem, where he witnesses the many faces of Israel.

It is a brief period of relative calm and time for the Jerusalem equivalent of a silly-season story.

The Western Wall is Judaism holiest place

An Israeli cell-phone company is offering a special service to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men: SIM cards which block calls to sex-lines. Why they don't just not call them in the first place?

An Israeli newspaper reports that enough can't resist the temptation to create a real demand to bar the numbers.

The BBC's Jerusalem office is next to Mea Sherim, the neighbourhood for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community.

Set apart

The women wear hats and long skirts to protect their modesty. The men usually dress in black, long coats, big hats - sometimes fur despite the soaring temperatures - and have distinctive long curls of hair hanging down by the ears.

I don't understand these people

Israeli soldier

The Haredi have set themselves apart from the rest of Israeli society, living according to the precepts of the Talmud and the Torah. If you drive on their streets during the Jewish Sabbath, some of them will throw stones at you.

That's why the police put up metal barriers on streets in central Jerusalem from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.

I was at the Western Wall on Remembrance Day, where a flame is kept burning for all the victims of the Holocaust and all those who died in Israel's many wars, each of which is seen by Israelis as a struggle for their very survival.

Bible studies

"I don't understand these people," the young soldier on memorial duty told me. I thought for a second he was talking about the Palestinians, but then I saw him looking at the Haredi, rocking backwards and forwards in prayer at the Wall.

The conflict between the orthodox and secular is long-standing

Most Hardei exempt themselves from military service. Partly they believe their intensive full-time Bible study in Yeshivas - or religious schools - is just as vital to the survival of the Jewish people as carrying a gun in the occupied territories.

Some don't recognise the secular state of Israel - a Jewish state will be brought into being by God at the proper time - and don't see why they should have to defend it.

While I was at the Wall, the siren sounded marking the moment when most Israelis pause to reflect in silence on the sacrifices that have made that state possible.

All over the country, the traffic comes to an instant halt, the cars left at crazy angles at intersections. People step out of their vehicles and bow their heads.

Many Israels

Outside the Old City, a colleague watched just this scene. He also saw three Haredi Jewish men stay in their car as the siren sounded.

A young Israeli man was standing a few metres away. Short, spiky hair, sunglasses, he looked pretty average, my colleague told me.

Probably he'd done army service, probably in the territories, probably, as Israel is a small place, had friends who had died there.

After the silence was over, this young Israeli man tilted his chin up, and drawing in a deep breath, snorted back a big wad of phlegm. Then he went over to the car with the Haredi and spat, a large green glob sliding slowly down the driver's side window as he walked away.

There are many Israels. Perhaps the most critical divides is between the ultra religious and the secular. The country sometimes seems like a cracked vase, only the pressure of external threat holding it together.

The secular-religious conflict in Israel is just on hold until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached its conclusion.

Click here for day one
Click here for day two
Click here for day three