It is a strange and beautiful place, where I live now. There are figs, dates, honey, oranges and wild herbs. It is witheringly hot in the summer. The heat ripples like radiation over the rocks, and the great dome of blue sky above us yields not a drop of moisture for months on end. There are hamsin — dust storms — that come from the Sahara desert and make the air milky and dry. Sand snakes across the roads and coats every leaf, every window and eyelash with African dust.

To the south, the great continent of Africa looms as a shadow on the horizon. To our east, Iraq, Iran and further and further — China. To our north, Greece, the Balkans and Europe. We are, as the ancients said, the belly button of the world.

The country is divided in half laterally. One side is majestic desert, silent and massive. Camels wander over distant hilltops and date trees gather around oases. Desert foxes trot in the dusky light, looking for prey and raptors wheel and circle far above, silently. The other half of this place is much more verdant, with dusty Mediterranean olive trees and black rock. Wildflowers bloom each year, just briefly and the sea, an unnameable green-blue-ancient-froth shimmers under the setting sun.

This is a place in which in the 21st century, goatherds follow their flock over the rocky terrain and not 30 kilometers away huge jets fly away toward America. Or Paris.

This place was a utopian dream, about one hundred years ago. The blink of an eye in the scheme of things. The land was tilled and irrigated, camps were built, then dusty towns, swamps were tamed and grateful European refugees danced in the moonlight and made love in tents. Crates of sweet Jaffa oranges were sent to Europe. Anything was possible.

This is Israel. You may have heard of us? War torn country? Start Up Nation? CNN Headliner, usually under the “breaking news” banner. There is a saying here: When a fly lifts a wing in Israel, the whole world watches. We have a few problems, you might say.

Israelis are a very unique people. Because this country is very young still, less than 70 years old, few Israelis are really from here. Those that are are called sabras — after the prickly cactus fruit that is sharp on the outside but very sweet inside. It is said that an Israeli will run you over in a car, then back up and take you to the hospital. I have found this to be the most accurate, if not literal truth about Israelis that I have ever heard.

Israelis fly their flag passionately here. Almost every home has the blue and white flag attached to it somehow. Fluttering flags of pride, of victory, of freedom — of survival — dot the country lavishly. Never have you seen so many flags.

I sometimes call Israel Slap-it-Together Nation. This country was built in a hurry. Despite the high number of BauHaus buildings in Tel Aviv, mostly, Israel is made up of hasty construction. Order and aesthetics are not valued as much here, something that Americans hold dear. No, here, if it works, it works and aesthetics be damned. Our metal shutters are heavy and made of a kevlar derivitave. This country was built with attack in mind.

The flag in front of my kibbutz-like, rambling building is tattered and limp from the rains last winter. I wonder if someone will change it. I don’t know who is in charge of these things. Three doors down there is a very large and also ramshackle home of religious Jews and their multitudinous children. They have a few chickens. They are a boisterous group and the night often rings with singing and music. The flowering of Israel has reminded Jews here of their Middle Eastern blood; dancing is wild and frenzied, with ululating, clapping and stomping. Israeli Jews bear no resemblance to American, Woody Allen/Jerry Seinfeld chicken soup Jews, a fact which I am still digesting, having lived in the US as long as I did.

No, Israelis are very wild, very assertive cousins of a completely different kind. They are like no other people on planet earth; refugees living in a war zone, Holocaust survivors, desert dreamers, Russians, Moroccans, Iraqis and more all eking out a life in this unforgiving place, creating a new identity in a hostile environment. Making history as it makes them, reimagining what it means to be a Jew in the 21st century.

Some say that Israelis live with a kind of siege mentality, what with the constant state of war. That they are numb, damaged, racist. I suppose some of us are, just as some Americans are. Or some South Africans are. Israelis are people, after all. But mostly, Israelis cling to life like barnacles on the rocks, smashed by the waves. They sing, they dance, they laugh, they live. They live like there is no tomorrow, which is part of their appeal to me, I suppose. Imagine if you lived on the razor’s edge, where the tornado hits the ground, where tomorrow, next week, next month is not guaranteed. It does something to you. Maybe it was something I wanted. I was reeling from the grief of my brother’s suicide when I came here and I had lived in the land of the Lotus Eaters — Los Angeles — for ten years. Maybe I needed to live in a place in which all is in very sharp focus.

I love where I live now, but more, I love why I live now. I feel like my life in this fishbowl matters. That what I do matters. I am sure I could do things that also matter elsewhere. I suppose it is a matter of perspective and taste. Sometimes I think I may have lived another life here, before.

But increasingly, I am afraid. This is not the dream Theodore Herzl imagined. This is not the way it was supposed to go. And even though history has produced Israelis, people I feel a part of and that I genuinely love, I can’t help but feel that their country, their very dream has betrayed them. They sing and dance on the edge of the world. Cataclysm is only about 30 kilometers to the east, where millions of Palestinians live in a military occupation that nobody ever imagined. And they are angry. And they are humiliated. And they are coming for us without truly getting how many of “us” hate this situation too. Without knowing how many of “us” want to know the Palestinians, to make peace with them, to share this tent.

The cost of living here is out of control, Israel is a pariah state, we have an untenable situation with enemies at every border and a government that is striking up the orchestra while the ship lurches toward the depths.

Ben Gurion would roll over in his grave to see the way Israel is today. This was not the dream.

The question is — where is this all going? Is this to be the ugly end? Or is Israel, like so many other places in the world, at a stress point that will yield, finally, to something better? But what will fill the gap between the tipping point and the results? Will I be here to write about it?

There is much tension in the air here, after a right wing government has just ensured its survival. Still, the Israelis dance. They cook and argue and make love. But they deserve better. We deserve better.