c. 2003 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Basement music rooms have been converted to a “sealed” bomb shelter designed to protect against possible chemical or biological attack. Students have been drilled to get into the rooms in three minutes flat.

While international schools elsewhere in Israel and the Middle East region have already closed their doors in anticipation of war, Jerusalem’s Anglican School is determined to keep operating right up until a U.S. attack on Iraq begins _ and resume school as soon as it is deemed safe to do so.

Helen Wellby, a senior administrator at the school, attributes it to a sense of “mission” the church-funded school, catering to a mixed expatriate and local population, carries into its operations.

“I don’t want to sound preachy. But I think that the Christian principles of the school, and the feeling that we are here to give a service, means that we will do everything we can to keep that service going under all circumstances,” said Wellby, who hails from the south of England.

International church institutions operating in Israel and the West Bank are bracing for a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, both materially and spiritually.

Most such institutions, and their foreign staff, say they’ll keep functioning during the pending war period even as other expatriates, including nonessential United Nations personnel, diplomats and their families, are evacuated back to their home countries.

About one-third of the Anglican School’s students have already left the country in the past two weeks, said Wellby. Students who departed will be able to continue their classwork via a special Internet network that has been established.

But the school has also made extensive preparations for those who will remain, conducting emergency air raid drills for students at the school, and civil defense training sessions for families.

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“We had rehearsals for getting into the shelters in three minutes, with special provisions for those little pupils who can’t quite make the steps,” she said.

“We are paying a lot of attention to the feelings of those left behind,” Wellby said. “We have given a lot of pastoral attention in homeroom sessions and discussion groups to those who may be feeling bereft in a moment like this, students who wonder why they have to stay if others are leaving because they believe it is dangerous.”

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While Israeli military observers rate the chances of an Iraqi attack on Israel as much lower this time around than in the 1991 Gulf War, church-run hospitals and other aid institutions are stocking up on supplies that might be needed in the event of an attack, biological, chemical or conventional.

At Bridges for Peace, an evangelical Christian organization based in Jerusalem, a $100,000 war aid chest has been created that can provide items like food, blankets and supplies to needy families who might be left homeless in an emergency.

Even if Israel doesn’t become a direct target of attack, such supplies can be used to ease conditions among those Israelis or Palestinians who will suffer from economic hardship during the crisis, said Clarence Wagner of the Bridges for Peace program. The sharp drop in tourism, for instance, has left hundreds of Christian Palestinian families in the Jerusalem and Bethlehem area jobless.

West Bank and Gazan church institutions are stockpiling food and water in the event that Israel declares a curfew and closure of Palestinian areas for the duration of a war, as it did in 1991.

“We have stockpiled food and water for three months for the hospital staff, patients and families at St. Luke’s Hospital in Nablus and Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza,” said Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal.

But few preparations have been made either by West Bank church institutions or by the general population for the possibility of chemical or biological war.

On the one hand, Israel has not distributed gas masks widely to Palestinians, saying it is the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. And among most Palestinian families, Christian or Muslim, the overwhelming hardships of conducting daily life against the tumult of Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left them with few resources, either materially or emotionally, to make individual preparations.

According to U.N. estimates, over 50 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are now unemployed, and more than 60 percent are living under the poverty line. United Nations-sponsored food aid programs now extend to 220,000 Palestinian families, reaching almost half of the Palestinian population in the territories.

“The average family tries to keep a week’s supply of food on hand,” said Rana Khoury, acting director of Bethlehem’s International Center, which is supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church. “But this is because they are anticipating an Israeli curfew in the event of a war with Iraq.

“In the first Gulf War, many Palestinian families also sealed rooms; this time around, nobody is. I think people have the feeling that things can’t get much worse than they already are for us.”

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