Jerusalem Snowed Under by a White Plague : Mideast: Drifts cause traffic tie-ups. Other parts of Israel experience dangerous flooding.

Unfortunately, none of the three great monotheistic religions that make Jerusalem their home venerate the snowplow.

Everyone knows how the Lord of Hosts parted the Red Sea, but what about the driveway?

Jerusalem was buried Tuesday under the worst of four storms in this long winter. Olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane bent under the accumulated weight of the steadily falling, sticky flakes. Drifts blocked winding roads into the un-infernal Valley of Hell outside the Old City walls. The golden Dome of the Rock wore a jaunty white cap.

It was a plague befitting Pharaoh.

And speaking of Pharaoh, the authorities seemed to take the attitude of one landlord whose answer to leaky ceilings has been, “Wait until spring. . . .”

Jerusalem is unaccustomed to snow--a once-a-year dusting is considered enough--and only a few key arteries of the city were cleared for the morning rush hour. Bulldozers stood in for snowplows, an unknown tool in these parts. Many drivers who ventured out got stuck on slippery slopes and abandoned their cars, leaving traffic horrendously tied up. The government broadcast instructions for everyone to stay home.

Schools were closed, and children took the opportunity to build snowmen and get sniffles. At Hadassah hospital, a rare blood type for an emergency operation had to be flown in by helicopter.

The storms caused dangerous flooding in other parts of the country; a soldier who tried to cross a rushing gully in Galilee by jeep drowned, state radio reported. The snow, which blew in from Turkey, also brought down power lines and cut off roads in Syria and Jordan, where the snow was the heaviest in 40 years.

In Jerusalem, the notable mix of cultures and costumes was oddly altered. The checked cotton scarf worn by Arabs as a defense against the usual blustery winds of winter seemed insubstantial. The woolen frocks of Franciscan monks seemed at home in a medieval way.

But they were perhaps outdone by the long black overcoats, fur hats and fedoras of pious Jews from Eastern Europe. Their outfit, which seems so out of place under the usually sunny skies of the city, for once made the most sense of all.

The tension that perpetually blankets the city also was transformed. Here, a thrown snowball between Palestinian and Israeli can be taken as playful or threatening.

There was one report this winter of a Palestinian wrapping a stone in snow and hurling it at the police. But the more common outcome, it seemed, was a kind of truce. Young Palestinian boys asked permission to throw snowballs at passing cars, holding out the projectile for inspection before tossing it.

In Abu Tor, where Israelis live on one side and Arabs the other of an old borderline, Israeli and Palestinian adults actually tossed snowballs--in jest--at one another. “ Yoffi !” a Palestinian cried out in Hebrew when splattered by an Israeli direct hit. “Beautiful!”

After three years of drought, Israel has been drenched from end to end. Precipitation for Jerusalem and the soaked coastal towns of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Acre and Gaza has far exceeded the annual norm.

The Sea of Galilee, which at its low level last year was sprouting sandbars, this year is near to overflowing; the gates of a small dam have been opened to let the water pour into the suddenly torrential Jordan River. The national water company has been busily pumping excess into underground reservoirs to replenish a depleted aquifer. Still, hotels on the lake shore were being warned of possible flooding.

To the north, Lake Hula, drained in the early independence years by Zionist pioneers to open farmland in the north of Galilee, reappeared--drowning crops and chickens on many cooperative farms.

Israel’s only ski resort, on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, is closed on account of too much snow. No one could drive there anyway.

Safed, the mystical cabalistic town where rabbis last year gathered to pray for rain, has been cut off by a veritable blizzard. Stop praying, already!

The snow washed away the usual litany of disaster on the radio newscasts. It took a full 10 minutes on the 15-minute, English-language afternoon news for word to come of anything else. Even the squabble between Israel and the United States over new foreign aid was pushed out of the limelight.

One political observer quipped that perhaps the issue was settled by the weather.

“After today,” said political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, “Prime Minister (Yitzhak) Shamir can tell President Bush that, indeed, settlements are frozen.”