Stories about the recent arrests of apocalyptic cult members who allegedly planned to take part in a millennial battle between the forces of good and evil have circulated widely in the international press. But most residents think the threat of doomsday religious violence is overblown. Among some, the fear is that the city of 600,000 people, which Jews consider their eternal, united and indivisible capital, will somehow lose its Jewish character under the onslaught of Christian celebrations and hordes of foreign gentiles. But an overwhelming majority of Israelis consider Jerusalem’s wariness parochial, and believe the negative signals emitted by hard-line rabbis will spoil a golden opportunity for business and religious understanding.

In many ways, the lack of enthusiasm has more to do with the recurring conflict between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews than with xenophobia directed at Christians. “It’s not an anti-gentile campaign, by any stretch of the mind,” said Yaron Ezrahi, an analyst at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

According to local rabbis, some politically influential Orthodox Jewish leaders fear their less observant brethren will be vulnerable to the religious culture of Christian missionaries, who are headed to the holy city in droves.

Christians in Jerusalem are nothing new. Tradition holds that Jesus Christ was buried here almost 2,000 years ago, where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Christianity’s holiest site, now stands. Christians have their own quarter in the Old City, alongside those of Muslims and Jews; and the cityscape has been dotted with the steeples of churches since the Byzantine era.

Although Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967, is under single Israeli administration, the city’s Jews, Christians and Muslims live in separate worlds. In the Old City’s narrow alleyways, a pious Jew wearing a yarmulke may walk past a veiled Muslim woman and brush shoulders with a robed priest, but the three communities manage to largely ignore each other.

The millions of pilgrims expected next year threaten to change this status quo and transform the city into a “vast center for Christianity,” warned Yated Neeman, a weekly newspaper written for and by Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority. “They will carry their crosses on their hearts and in their heads and will blatantly do all in their power to publicize and parade their crosses and their sacrilege.”

Fearful that Jewish-run hotels will abandon their traditions to accommodate the crush of Christian guests, the Jerusalem rabbinate, the city’s Jewish religious authority, has issued guidelines for hotels wishing to retain their kosher certificates (religious seals of approval which, in Israel, are key to commercial success). Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, said recently that crosses and Christmas trees were offensive since they are “an integral part of Christian belief — a way of serving God that is forbidden to Jews.” He commended the rabbinate’s decision to keep the Christian symbols out of Jerusalem hotel lobbies and exclusively behind closed doors of reception halls reserved for gentiles.

In addition, there will be no festive music in kosher hotels on Christmas and New Year’s because both holidays fall on the Jewish Sabbath, when observant Jews avoid using electricity. Some Jerusalem hotel managers — including Rony Timsitt, manager of the Jerusalem Hyatt — have complained that the dour atmosphere in Jerusalem hotels will cost them business on New Year’s Eve and have asked the rabbinate to make an exception for the occasion. Rabbi Lau dismissed the idea: “Why should we, because of one evening, destroy everything we have built together?”

The absence of Christmas carols and Muzak is a blessing for some. “If there’s one city in the world that should be Jewish, it should be Jerusalem,” said Jonathan Rosenblum, a columnist for the daily Jerusalem Post. “As someone who grew up in the United States, I appreciate the fact that there is one place where Jews don’t feel like they’re living in a foreign culture.”

Praying at the Western Wall the other day, Odeya Rotem, a 34-year-old religious woman in a long skirt and soft hat, said “The year 2000 has no meaning for me. We have our own calendar.” According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5760.

But not all Jewish residents agree with the ban on Christmas in Jerusalem. Many Israelis — who consider Jerusalem their capital, but would like it to be an open, cosmopolitan city — are appalled by the hostility expressed by some religious Jews. Rabbi David Rosen, director of the Anti-Defamation League in Israel, deplored “Rabbi Lau’s retrogressive mind-set.”

He went on to say that Lau’s statements highlight the weakness of the rabbinate as an institution, one that is intimidated by hard-line ultra-Orthodox Jews. “I don’t think Christmas trees irk a majority of Jews in the slightest — only those who are very insular. A large proportion of the public isn’t excited by them, but not upset either. The overwhelming majority of Israelis welcome the pilgrims — not just because they’ll be good for the tourism industry — but because they want friends for Israel.”

At a diplomatic level, when Palestinians and Israelis are engaged in negotiations over the final status of Jerusalem, it is important for Israel to show that members of all faiths are treated fairly under its rule, said political analyst Ezrahi. In nearby Bethlehem, the Palestinian Authority has channeled more than $100 million of foreign aid into revamping the birthplace of Jesus, in the hope that tourism will yield long-term benefits and curry goodwill for Palestinians in the Christian world.

Jerusalem city officials have also made an effort not to antagonize Christians. “The gates of Jerusalem are open,” says the motto on the city’s millennium Web site. The new millennium is an opportunity for Jerusalem to “take advantage of its status as a holy city” and present itself as “a city of peace, pluralism and understanding between religions,” said Michael Weil, special advisor for Jerusalem 2000 at the city hall.

But the municipality’s hands are tied in various ways. Doomsday scenarios are keeping authorities on their toes and creating a climate of wariness rather than joyful expectation. Although the risk that a pseudo-Christian cult will try to blow up Jerusalem’s shrines, unleash Armageddon and hasten Jesus’ Second Coming has been much exaggerated by the press, the municipality has to be prepared for the worst.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s leading newspaper, some 15,000 policemen, soldiers and security officers are expected to patrol Jerusalem on New Year’s Eve; 400 video cameras are being installed in the Old City’s cramped alleys. “If the Christian celebration is a celebration of the end of days, then their celebration could be our demise,” emphasized Rabbi Donniel Hartman, a teacher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

While Jesus look-alikes are eyed suspiciously by the security services as potential terrorists these days, wealthy Christian pilgrims are viewed as dangerous proselytizers by ultra-Orthodox Jews. “It’s evident from the Web sites of Christian groups that they’re planning to make a special missionary effort for the millennium,” said Rabbi Mordecai Plaut, editor of the English version of Yated Neeman. “They’re putting a lot of money into it.”

Rabbi Plaut’s concern is that Christian missionaries will try to win “those out there who are less secure, less involved with their Judaism.”

Ultimately, though, the lack of enthusiasm toward Christian tourists has less to do with these pilgrims’ religion than with Israel’s domestic divisions. “The ultra-Orthodox would like Jerusalem to be a ghetto,” said Ezrahi. “They have an aversion against strangers of all kinds and in the category of strangers, secular Jews — who have an alternative understanding of Judaism — are much more of a threat to them than fundamental Christians.”

All year long, in the towns on the Mediterranean coast where most Israelis live, Jews desecrate the Sabbath by driving to movies, watching soccer on TV and drinking freshly made espresso. Jerusalem used to be different — a more conservative and spiritual city. But even here, to the dismay of the ultra-Orthodox, secular Jews are clamoring for a lifestyle less confined by traditional religious rules.

When Timsitt, the Hyatt Hotel manager, spoke in parliament recently in favor of allowing music on Friday nights, he was thinking more about the freedom of his establishment than in terms of Christian rights. Timsitt hopes that hotels in Jerusalem will be subject one day to the same kind of religious laws as hotels in Eilat — a relaxed beach town at Israel’s southern tip where hotels are awarded kosher certificates for complying with Jewish dietary laws but are free to operate nightclubs on the Sabbath.

Indifference to Christianity remains the most widespread attitude among both religious and secular Israelis. High school students learn very little about Christianity — and only in the context of history lessons which dwell on the overwhelmingly negative 2,000-year-old story of Jewish-Christian relations. Ignorance coupled with an aversion toward religiosity in general help explain why Israel’s secular majority has allowed a hard-line minority to dominate the millennium issue, said Rabbi Hartman.

At a governmental level, the decision to keep celebrations low-key also reflects domestic concerns. Despite the huge organizational effort that hosting millions of tourists demands, the official line is that the new millennium is a Christian celebration, not a state event. The Israeli government does not want to provoke the religious parties who hold about a quarter of the seats in parliament, said Ezrahi, because they are instrumental in supporting the peace process with Syria and the Palestinians. “The Israeli government is making a rational calculation about what is important to Israel. The ultra-Orthodox will eventually lose their power, but only when peace is consummated — sometime in the next millennium.”

The Across Borders Project aims to bring the Net to Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East, to promote connections among the refugees, as well as provide a repository for Palestine news and history.

“When you’re unable to go to picnics, unable to go to the sea, unable to go to movies in Jerusalem, it’s like being in a prison cell. Your world becomes very limited,” says Muna Muhaisen, a 39-year-old Palestinian-American journalist who is one of the project’s main architects. She was born in Jerusalem but lost her residency rights during her parents’ exile. An American-trained journalist who came back to the West Bank in 1988 to cover the intifada and live in Dheisheh with her husband, Muhaisen faces deportation to the United States by Israeli authorities if she ventures out of the small territory under Palestinian control. The camp itself measures less than one (over-crowded) square kilometer. The Internet provides her with a way out — and a livelihood: Muhaisen is now an armchair reporter who gathers information on the Web.

The Web’s wealth of information is key not only for journalists like Muhaisen, but for many Palestinians, given that local media is still heavily censored by the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of Gaza and the West Bank. And, in a culture that has been dispersed across vast distances, the Web may offer the chance for refugees to make their voices heard in a coherent and organized way. “People are not happy about what is happening to them, but they need information,” said Muhaisen.

Bookmarks on the Dheisheh computer center’s machines link to a wide range of Arabic newspapers online, representing all sorts of political opinions — including opposition to the Palestinian Authority. Muhaisen sometimes jokes with her husband that “they will come arrest me and put a bullet through my head.” But her teasing sounds extremist. So far the Palestinian Authority, unlike other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, has not tried to block or filter access to the Internet.

The camp, however, may not be eager to have its site turned into a virtual battleground — with Palestinians and Orthodox Jews exchanging the same bitter invectives that have caused so much real-world bloodshed. The camp Web site, therefore, may filter some content itself. According to Adam Hanieh, Muna Muhaisen’s partner in the project, the camp can decide what do with unpleasant messages and whom to communicate with. “We’re just giving them skills,” he says. In Dheisheh, Webmaster Jamal Abdulkareem, a bearded serious-looking 33-year-old Palestinian who studied at the University of Portland, will decide what goes on the bulletin board and what doesn’t. It will not be possible to post messages directly on the site’s bulletin board.

Before the Across Borders center was inaugurated in July, about 20 people out of Dheisheh’s 10,000 residents had access to personal computers. Now, for 6 shekels (about $1.25) an hour, anyone can walk into the bright computer center housed in a busy cultural center for children and surf on one of the center’s 14 computers — provided they first get some basic training. (The center was funded with grants from the Canada Fund and several aid organizations, and with training from Birzeit University, the West Bank’s most prestigious Arab university.)

Compared to Israel — a technologically advanced society with a per capita gross domestic product that is 10 times that of Palestinians, the West Bank and Gaza still look like technological wastelands. There are 10 Palestinian Internet service providers and there are Internet cafes in most large towns of the West Bank and Gaza but only 20 percent of households in the West Bank and Gaza had telephone lines in 1997 and a mere 4 percent had computers, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.

As Palestinians get a taste of what the Internet offers, that could change. Mutassem al-Ghrouze, a 13-year-old resident of the camp’s makeshift houses and cluttered streets, has already received e-mail from Wissam, a 15-year-old Palestinian whose grandparents took refuge in Lebanon. “I am not happy here. I hope to go to Palestine,” wrote Wissam.

It’s been 51 years since Palestinians fled or were forced out of their villages during the war that followed the creation of Israel, and dispersed throughout the Middle East. The future of these refugees and their offspring — about 3 million people — is one of the thorniest issues Israel and the Palestinian Authority will need to address in a final peace settlement.

Most families in Dheisheh have relatives in various Arab states, in the United States or in Europe. However, poverty, distance and ill-defined citizenship prevent frequent reunions between former neighbors or relatives. Palestinians in the West Bank cannot visit compatriots in the Gaza Strip 70 miles away on the Mediterranean coast unless they obtain hard-to-get permits from Israeli authorities.

It is unlikely that the refugees ever will be granted the right to return en masse to their grand-parents’ villages, many of which no longer exist or have been converted into Israeli cities. But in the meantime, Across Borders is trying to bring refugees back to a virtual Palestine, with plans for a network of computer centers and Web sites in the often low-tech and run-down Palestinian camps — first in the West Bank and Gaza, and eventually in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

By making letters, oral history, family trees, pictures and maps all available in Arabic and in English, Across Borders will help young Palestinians like Mutassem and Wissam compare experiences, return to their roots and develop a shared identity.

Mutassem is still mourning his older brother Bassam, killed by an Israeli sniper in 1991. At 12, Bassam was the camp’s youngest victim of the intifada, the Palestinian uprising that rocked Israeli-occupied territories from 1986 to 1993. His name and brief biography are mentioned in the camp’s Web site under “martyrs.”

Wissam, the pen-pal from Lebanon, sent Mutassem words of consolation: “I’m very sorry for your brother. But he is lucky to be in heaven with the other martyrs,” he wrote. “You should be proud of him.”

Of course, since the Net’s inception, people have pinned hopes on its ability to break down political borders — and there is some evidence that it has encouraged communication between Israelis and Arabs. In June, when the Israeli army destroyed a power plant and cut electricity in Beirut in retaliation for rocket attacks on Israel’s northern border, the local press reported that citizens of Lebanon and Israel came together in chat rooms to discuss the blackout.

For Muhaisen, however, the Net’s value as a tool to communicate with Israelis is greatly overshadowed
by its potential as a tool for Palestinian communications. “Even if there is a peace settlement, we’ll have to fight for democracy and social change,” she says.

In her mind, this means, for example, resisting Islamic pressure to segregate the sexes. Muhaisen wants all Across Borders centers to be co-educational. “We’re going to be relentless about it because you can’t exclude girls,” she says. “It’s important that the centers be accessible to as many people as possible so that they reflect the needs and the voice of the whole camp,” adds her partner, Hanieh.

Although Palestinians in Dheisheh have become more religious in recent years — “because of their despair and lack of faith in the peace process”, according to Muhaisen — staff at the computer center is confident it can convince recalcitrant parents to allow their daughters to use computers in the presence of boys. The statistics are encouraging: Nine out of 15 adults who registered for their first computer class at the Dheisheh camp were women. One of the computer instructors is a long-haired 22-year-old woman who wears no veil. And in the camp, where Muhaisen is one of three female journalists, working mothers are increasingly common.

Promoting gender equality may prove more difficult in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, where Across Borders plans to open its next computer center. Gaza residents, stuck on a narrow piece of land, wedged between the Mediterranean sea, where they can’t sail, and Israel, which they can’t enter without a special permit, generally practice a stricter strain of Islam than their West Bank counterparts.

Opening people’s minds, however, is one of the project’s main goals. Refugees will be able to communicate with outside visitors thanks to bulletin boards on the camp Web sites. The two-way dialogue between refugees — who live in a relatively closed, traditional environment — and anyone or anything that happens to be on the Web is likely to yield some surprises.

In theory, supervisors and peer pressure in the computer room will keep sites that mention sex, drugs and other topics offensive to the community off-limits. But at the center one recent day, a teenager quietly read an innocent-looking, all-text Web page devoted to the merits of Viagra — seeming to suggest that walls would fall faster than the project’s founders imagine.

The real question is whether Israelis and Palestinians, who live in mutual suspicion and often hatred, a literal stone’s throw away from one another, will meet peacefully on the camp’s Web site. Some Israelis may find the site’s tear-wrenching accounts of Palestinian tragedies one-sided, or object to texts cursing Israelis for having ever set their eyes on the land of Palestine. And, as Hanieh points out, it’s likely that not every message sent will be posted.

Dheisheh residents haven’t had to respond to any online Jewish extremists yet. But Muhaisen has already made her choice — she won’t reply to Israeli e-mail, good or bad.

“I’m not for the normalization of relations unless it’s on an equal footing,” she said. “I received messages of support from Israelis but I don’t plan to write back. They said [about the project] ‘It’s a wonderful idea. Can we do anything to help?’ But I thought: We’re here because of you, as refugees with stories to tell. It’s just too paradoxical.”

“We are returning the hope,” read giant banners in
a corner of Rabin Square — Tel Aviv’s central square, dedicated to the
statesman who was assassinated during a peace rally on November 4, 1995.

“Bibi go home, we want peace,” shouted people in a honking, flag-waving car cruising by.

On the surface, the elections were not about peace. Debates focused more on Netanyahu’s quirky personality, the economy and the strained
relations between Israel’s secular and religious Jews, rather than on the future of Jerusalem.

However, the knowledge that the next prime minister would have to take up the nation’s
unfinished business with the Palestinians was never too far in the back of voters’ minds. Israelis had to chose between Netanyahu, a tough and somewhat
obstinate negotiator, and Barak, a presumably more flexible one. Implementation of last fall’s Wye River accords, granting Palestinians an
additional 13 percent of the West Bank in exchange for security guarantees, was unilaterally suspended by Netanyahu during the election campaign. But Monday’s vote showed that a majority of Israelis thought the stalemate had lasted long enough.

In cars, bicycles and on foot, tens of thousands of elated Barak supporters poured spontaneously into Rabin Square for an all-night celebration that
had the appearances of a long-overdue reunion.

“As soon as I heard the results, I felt I had to come here to make a
connection with the day when it all stopped,’ said Samuel Hassin, a 38-year-old architect. “I’m coming back after being lost for three years. I’m
happy, but I’m also upset. A lot of damage was done in this time. These three years were years of darkness.”

Yet people did not rejoice at once. At 10 p.m., when the first exit polls came out, Rabin Square was eerily empty. Mindful of the disappointment of
1996, when Shimon Peres’ narrow victory over Netanyahu melted into defeat
when final results were known at dawn, people tried to hold back their joy.

But they could not. As they poured into the square, again and again people expressed a mixture of immense relief, sadness and hope as they grasped the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as prime
minister was finally over.

“It’s finished. These were three awful years for all of us, morally, economically, politically,” said Shoshana Fried, 54. “Now I hope that Barak
has the power to continue from where Rabin left off,” said Fried, a bookkeeper who was present when Rabin was killed and has come to all the
memorial rallies held in his honor since then.

“It’s the first time that there’s real happiness here since Rabin died. People are smiling to each other and only now realizing how demoralized
they were for three and a half years,” said Joel Kantor, 50, a photographer.

Most recognized that the road to peace would be difficult, with tough questions like borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of
Jerusalem waiting for Barak at the negotiating table. “I don’t think it
will be easy but I’m not afraid,” said Yalon Schoel, a 64-year-old agronomist. “The former situation was more dangerous because the other side
[the Palestinians] were going to lose patience.”

Right-wingers kept a low profile on election night, and on Rabin Square, there was
not a yarmulke in sight. Many on the left blame Netanyahu’s supporters for
having created the climate of hatred and incitement that culminated in
Rabin’s slaying. “Rabin’s death put a stigma on all of us,” said Yair
Greenberg, 18, standing with a few friends in front of the mostly deserted
Likud Party headquarters when the first electoral results came out . Nearby a fellow Netanyahu supporter promised journalists: “God will bring Barak down.”

Defections like Zigelboim were common Monday as Israelis overwhelmingly rejected Netanyahu’s reelection bid. Three years after Netanyahu narrowly defeated incumbent prime minister Shimon Peres, who took over after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Barak won 58 percent of the vote Monday, compared to 42 percent for Netanyahu, according to early estimates.

Those results would have seemed implausible just a few weeks ago. Throughout the campaign, Israeli pundits were predicting a close election, trying to decipher how the dynamics of a five-way race and an all but certain run-off, would ultimately play out. But in the final 24 hours of the campaign, the puzzle was greatly simplified: All three minor candidates dropped out of the race, leaving voters to choose between incumbent Netanyahu and his left-leaning challenger Barak.

Labor’s resounding victory Monday left Netanyahu supporters to wonder why so many voters jumped ship since the 1996 elections.

Here in Rehovot, a small town southwest of Tel Aviv, voters were clearly pro-Netanyahu in 1996. While Netanyahu won by less than 1 percentage point nationwide, he beat the Peres by nearly 7 points in Rehovot.

Before Monday’s election, there were again plenty of campaign posters on the walls proclaiming “Only Netanyahu” but the hesitations and defections of people in the streets told a different story.

The reasons for the erosion of Netanyahu’s support are as different as the people who put Netanyahu in power in the first place. Like Zigelboim who moved to Israel from Lithuania, many secular immigrants from the former Soviet Union were wary of Netanyahu because of his connection with religious parties, even though many supported his hard-line stance on the issue of Israeli security.

Leonard Zakharov, a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union and once a Netanyahu supporter, is not so much disappointed by the prime minister’s policies than turned off by what he calls “small things”. He is irked by Netanyahu’s association with Shas, a religious, Sephardic party whose leaders have referred to the new Soviet immigrants as prostitutes and criminals. “Netanyahu and Barak are the same. But Barak has promised to separate himself from the religious,” said Zakharov, 58, who left Ukraine four years ago.

On the other side of the political spectrum, religious conservatives, who played a key role in the Netanyahu coalition, could not forgive Netanyahu’s signing of the Hebron and Wye River accords trading land for peace with the Palestinians.

Exit polls showed Netanyahu’s most loyal backers were religious Jews and settlers who live in Israeli-occupied territory. They, too, have their grudges against Bibi, but Barak, who has explicitly promised to shift state resources from talmudic seminars and settlements to education and housing, has left them little choice.

A group of men in a neighborhood barber shop announced in unison “only Netanyahu!” when asked which candidate they supported But when prodded, Azrikan Maron, the owner of a neighborhood falafel stand, admitted having strong reservations. He stuck with Netanyahu “not that I like him so much, but I’m afraid of the other side,” he said from the barber’s chair. He fears that Barak will go “too far in the peace process”.

“Bibi was not OK as prime minister — his relationship with people is very bad and he is not trustworthy,” said Rachel, a 30-year-old biology teacher wearing the long skirt and hat of religious Jews, who declined to give her last name. “But for me as a religious person, he’s (was) the best option.” The people surrounding Barak “will destroy the status quo and the Sabbath,” she said.

A settler who commutes daily from the West Bank to a high-tech park outside Rehovot, Nati Sobovitz, 46, expressed the same resignation. “I’m not happy that Netanyahu signed the Wye and Hebron accords, but he’s a political realist. Barak will do much worse.” He thinks Barak will freeze construction and reduce financial assistance to the settlements. “We remember how it was under [Yitzhak] Rabin.”

Many secular Israelis did not see vast differences in the politics of the two candidates. Maron, 50, predicted Barak’s election will mean little substantive change on key issues like economic policy and security. “Under different circumstances these two candidates would live under the same roof. It’s not like in the old days when [David] Ben-Gurion was radically different from [Menachem] Begin.”

It is this narrowing of ideological differences between Israel’s two longtime rival parties, the left-leaning Labor Party and the right-leaning Likud, that makes the switch from Netanyahu to Barak so easy for many.

Avishai Mizrahi, 58, a native of Rehovot, voted for in 1996 but “I didn’t think Bibi would be so extreme.” Now he says he sees a man who is dangerous, who “likes to be tough but doesn’t listen,” may provoke a war and has even managed to damage Israel’s friendship with the United States. But this time, he voted for Barak. “I’ve never followed a leader blindly.”

The special flight — Israir 100 — was scheduled on the eve of Holocaust memorial day, for obvious symbolic reasons. Israelis are saying: We remember the plight of our people, forced out of their homes, pushed into ghettos, stripped of their jobs, dignity and life. No matter that the Kosovars are Muslim. A tremendously successful fund-raising concert given by leading Israeli pop singers in Tel Aviv last week was dubbed “We of All People Cannot Remain Silent.”

Miss Israel is here because, well, that’s not clear. Maybe she wants to do the Princess Di thing: use her celebrity to raise the profile of a humanitarian cause. And vice-versa. She isn’t that well-known, although her election in March made quite a splash in Israel and abroad: Rana Raslan, 22, born in the coastal city of Haifa, is the first Arab Miss Israel in the beauty contest’s history.

Right-wing Israelis were outraged. Can’t she be the beauty queen of some other country, they asked, listing the Arab states that surround the Jewish homeland. She stood her ground nicely. I’m an Israeli too, she said. There are 1 million Arabs in Israel proper — Arabs who stayed in their villages when Israel won its war of independence in 1948 and established a Jewish state in Palestine. Recently Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, wondered why the country didn’t offer the Palestinians who fled or were expelled by Jews in 1948 the sympathy it gives the Kosovars. “Has anyone ever thought of holding a telethon for the benefit of refugees in Gaza or the West Bank?” he asked. “The closer the despair comes to our house, the more it is our fault and the less willing we are to help out.”

But that is a different story. The pictures of Kosovar refugees on TV give Holocaust survivors nightmares. Today they are going to act.

Miss Israel is doing her share. She has a big box of chocolate Kinder eggs between her legs — something to give children in the refugee camp. “The message is peace, peace, peace,” the beauty queen says through her agent. She’s taking English lessons in preparation for the Miss Universe contest in May, but she’s not fluent yet.

On the flight to Skopje, Macedonia, the first 10 rows of the plane are taken up by medical aid neatly packed in cardboard boxes, slapped with a big photogenic sticker: “From Israel with sympathy.” The back of the Boeing 737 is a business class of sorts where organizers, government ministers and reporters move from seat to seat, exchanging information and sound bites.

At dawn, when the light through the windows turns pink, we see snow-covered mountains through the clouds, misty hills, well-marked fields and red roofs. There are NATO helicopters on the runway. When we touch ground in Skopje, it is about 7 a.m., local time. We board a bus quickly, taking refuge from the morning chill. We are told to hand over our passports to Macedonian authorities and are let out of the airport complex with a police convoy.

The view from the bus is a mixture of rural beauty, Communist-era apartment blocks and Balkan idiosyncrasies. There are fruit trees in full blossom on both sides of the road, distant mountains, and the minarets of mosques next to Orthodox Christian steeples. During the 40-minute bus ride that takes us north to the Brazde refugee camp, near the Kosovo border, we are lectured on the history of the Jewish community in the area. There have been Jews here for the past 26 centuries … A large number arrived with Alexander the Great … In March 1943 about 7,000 Jews were rounded up in a tobacco factory and sent to Treblinka. Nobody survived. Today there are 186 Jews left in Macedonia, mostly in Skopje.

When we finally get to Brazde, 111 refugees are already waiting in buses near the impressive field hospital run by the Israeli army. You might say that they’re all packed and ready to go, except they have no belongings, save the jackets they had on their backs when they were forced out of their houses by the Serbs, and the children’s knapsacks, packed with bits of food or diapers, given to them in the camp. They’re not entirely thrilled about the trip. Their home is Kosovo; they know little about Israel; they just want to leave a refugee camp that, despite the neat rows of tents put up by NATO, the free food and medical care, is a fenced-off universe of concentrated misery. There are 20,000 tents pitched in the mud here at Brazde.

From the corner of my eye, I catch Miss Israel practicing her English with NATO soldiers.

On the return trip, the professionals move to the front of the plane, where the aid boxes had been, while the refugees are told to sit in the back of the plane, like smokers. A young steward complains about the smell in the cabin. It’s not really his fault. He has no idea that refugee camps have no showers and that, in the absence of toilets, people are forced to crouch over holes in the ground, their naked parts barely protected by low canvas screens.

Arms extend into the central aisle during takeoff, imitating the surge and glide of wings. For some of the Kosovars, the flight is their first ever. Not for Enver Hassani, 40, who was expelled from Pristina, the regional capital of Kosovo. He’s been to Belgium, Germany, Switzerland — “You must understand: I used to have a life,” he says. Until two weeks ago, Hassani owned two gold jewelry shops and three small cars. But when the Serbs came to his door, saying “You like NATO? Go to NATO,” he and his four children were packed into a train for Macedonia and forced to leave everything behind.

Now Hassani is on his way to Israel, for the simple reason that he’s “tired of Europe and crazy Balkan politics.” He was also impressed by the Israeli field hospital in Brazde and thinks Israelis are OK.

“What is there on TV in Israel?” he asks. There’s CNN, BBC World, Spanish and Italian channels — “OK, OK,” he says, satisfied.

The plane’s intercom is used to make emotional speeches about the peace and dignity Kosovars will recover in Israel. Lunch is an introduction to Middle Eastern food, with hummus and baklava. There is Israeli folk music, mandatory clapping. Jewish Agency workers distribute bright white T-shirts and baseball caps bearing the star of David and sing, while Miss Israel pretends to sleep under her black sunglasses. The crew runs up and down the center aisle, plying the refugees with sponge cake until they cry uncle. And the plane, finally, touches down at Ben Gurion airport.

“Welcome to Israel, the land of milk and honey,” says the pilot. Unfortunately for the Kosovar refugees — lawyers, doctors and engineers, graced with individual names and addresses until just a few weeks ago — the PR circus has just begun.

Now Miss Israel wears her prettiest smile, walking down the rolling staircase as if it were a fashion runway. On the tarmac Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sarah, are approaching at a fast pace, surrounded by sharp-looking security guards. The cameras are trained on Netanyahu’s face and body, both in excellent pre-electoral shape. He has come to shake hands, touch babies and show support for a popular cause.

Until recently, of course, it had not been his cause. His foreign minister, waving the specter of a Muslim “Greater Albania,” home of Islamic terrorists, had criticized the NATO airstrikes. But with general elections around the corner, it would have been foolish for Netanyahu to ignore the Israeli public’s overwhelming response to the Balkan crisis. (So far, Israelis have given $1.5 million to help the Kosovars, a tidy sum for a country of 6 million people.)

The first refugees emerge from the back of the plane. They look almost clean and sporty in their white T-shirts and they wave Israeli flags to please their benefactors. The teenagers smile in the sun, noticing palm trees, anticipating happiness. But their parents look exhausted and haggard.

Briefed in advance, Netanyahu singles out Lamia Jaha, a woman whose parents saved Jews during World War II. Descendants of the people they saved now live in Israel. Lamia’s husband, Vlaznim, an anonymous-looking man in his 40s, is listening to the prime minister make TV promises about granting the Muslim family Israeli citizenship, when he is rudely yanked to the side by a CNN cameraman. He’s blocking the view. Vlaznim fights his way back to the same spot to listen — after all, the prime minister is talking about his future — but he’s grabbed by the collar again and greeted with a loud “Fuck you.” Welcome to Israel.

The refugees are taken to a room in the airport to be fjted, filmed and interviewed some more. Clearly, they’d rather see a firm bed and a shower. But the public wants to hear how grateful they are.

Miss Israel is in a foul mood. Security guards won’t let her into the reception room because her passport hasn’t been stamped properly. “It’s because I’m not Jewish, ” she says angrily in Hebrew. Forget the speech she wanted to give for the refugees. “That’s it. I’m going home.”