FILER SHOWS SOLDIER AND ARAB SEPARATED BY FENCE IN KIRYAT ARBA, 1998-04-27 (photo)

FOR RELEASE WITH BC-ISRAEL-ANNIVERSARY-MOOD - An elderly Palestinian and an armed Israeli soldier speak through a high fence which separates the Jewish settler community in Kiryat Arba from the Palestinian population of Hebron in a file photo from March 1994. Israel has absorbed over 2-million Jews in its first 50 years of statehood but despite the achievements, a fractious insecurity gnaws at Israeli society, sharpened by divisions between secular and religious and between left and right. Though peace moves with the Palestinians, frustrated aspirants still to their own state, are at deadlock, the debate in Israel is increasingly about the fault lines within as the country looks at itself and frets about where it is going. Israel is a nation turning 50 engaged in a search for a quality that has eluded its people for five decades - - normalcy. REUTERS