Israel Is Prepared and on Alert as 2000 Nears

The worst-case scenario shapes up like this:

Nearly half a million Muslim worshipers throng the Old City for the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, overwhelming police who try to screen and protect the crowds. Apocalyptic Christians stake out the nearby Mount of Olives in fevered anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ. Standard everyday terrorists, alarmed that Israel and its neighbors are making advances in the pursuit of peace, plot bomb attacks. And Y2K bugs infecting national computers spew chaos and trigger a meltdown.

Any one of these events is problematic enough. But Jerusalem is girding Friday for the convergence of some form of all of these events, sending authorities into a high state of alert.

More than 12,000 police will be deployed New Year’s Eve, and a veritable army of utility, health and transportation workers will be on duty to handle any emergency. The government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak is setting up a centralized command center to coordinate information and response starting at noon Friday.

But officials and experts caution against undue alarm. Following a wave of edgy speculation fueled by fears of millennium-inspired violence, officials are now seeking to calm nerves and assure the public that Israel and the Palestinian territories are prepared for whatever might happen.

“I think really nothing will happen this week,” said Arieh Amit, a former Jerusalem police chief and a consultant on security issues. “But in the future, God help us.”

As thousands of pilgrims descend on the Holy Land, the dilemma for Israeli authorities is how to walk the fine line between the fervently faithful and the scary lunatic fringe--and the line between freedom of religious observation and the securing of public safety.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, the minister in charge of public security, said some of the “unnecessary dramas” over apocalyptic scenarios have been exaggerated.

“Crazy people also have a right to celebrate the year 2000,” Ben-Ami said. “Not everyone is meant to celebrate the new millennium in the same way. It can be celebrated . . . without representing a danger.”

Among the fears: A small number of Christians--seeing 2000 as a prophetic date--believe that they should help trigger Armageddon and the Second Coming by driving Muslims from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, site of the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques as well as the biblical Jewish temples. On Friday, the likely final Friday of the Ramadan fasting month, more than 400,000 Muslims are expected to gather for prayers on the Temple Mount.

Even under the tightest security, every single worshiper can’t be searched.

“The danger may be one person deciding to commit suicide on the Temple Mount with a small bomb, or even with a stabbing,” Amit said. “Even something big can start small, like a ball of snow.”

Another fear: While the arrival of 2000 holds no special meaning for religious Jews or Muslims, extremists could take advantage of the spotlight to stage attacks targeting foreign tourists or aimed at spoiling regional peace talks. Warning bells go off every time progress is reported in the pursuit of peace, as is the case now, with critical talks between Israel and Syria resuming next week.

U.S. officials stepped up their warnings after the arrest this month in Jordan, which borders Israel, of 13 men suspected of ties to accused Saudi-born terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden and who were allegedly planning attacks on tourist hotels and buses. In addition, counterintelligence experts say four Iranian Kurds and two Algerian nationals were arrested in Turkey about the same time and with similar alleged terrorist connections.

The new wrinkle now for Israelis and Palestinians is the overlay of possible violence by messianic Christians. In a recent report titled “Project Megiddo”--named for the site in Israel where the Bible says the final battle between God and Satan is to be waged--the FBI described a proliferation of apocalyptic cults that planned to provoke bloodshed to hasten the “end of time.”

Fourteen alleged members of one such cult, the Denver-based Concerned Christians, were deported from Jerusalem in January; in all, about 60 Christians have been deported this year after authorities, using FBI information, determined that they might be a danger.

Annually, a small number of visitors to Jerusalem develop a mental condition known as the Jerusalem syndrome, in which they think that they are biblical characters and become obsessed with carrying out a godly mission in the holy city. Doctors say the syndrome is on the rise slightly with the coming of the millennium.

To be able to make the distinction between the crazed and the convinced, police have been receiving special training in mental health and in religion for nearly a year, officials say.

Clarence H. Wagner Jr., international director of Bridges for Peace, an evangelical Christian organization based in Jerusalem, is one of a number of experts who have helped train the Israeli police in the esoterica of Christianity.

Like much of Israeli society, the police are largely unfamiliar with Christianity, the differences among numerous denominations and how Christians practice their faith, Wagner said. He conducted about half a dozen seminars in the past year for the police.

For example, Wagner said he explained to the police that if they spot several Christians standing hand in hand at the Sea of Galilee and gazing toward the sky, they are not about to drown themselves in an act of mass suicide. Wagner told the officers that such a scene is a “moment of meditation and that Christians do it all the time.”

“We are sensitive to the importance of security,” Wagner said, “but there also has to be a recognition that most [visiting Christians] are perfectly normal folks here for a spiritual pilgrimage.”

Most mainstream evangelical Christians do believe in a Second Coming, but they do not believe that it has to happen between Dec. 31, 1999, and Jan. 1, 2000. The New Testament books of Matthew and Mark recount that “no man knoweth” the day or time that the “Son of God” will return.

The New Year, which is based on a Western Christian calendar, is not officially celebrated in Israel. Furthermore, it falls on a Friday night, which is the start of the Jewish Sabbath and a time when Jews are supposed to refrain from work. Hotels canceled parties for fear that they would anger rabbinical authorities.

After a month of negotiations, Israeli government officials were able to secure about 5,000 permits from the rabbis to allow specialized electrical and communications technicians to staff emergency services New Year’s Eve.

Gideon Sheffer, director of the emergency command center, said Israel is ready for Y2K. The private sector and the government have spent about $1 billion to upgrade computers and make other preparations for the transition. Israel’s two nuclear reactors at Dimona, in the Negev Desert, were shut down Wednesday and will remain off for about a week. Computers controlling most of the electrical grid have already been advanced to March 2000.

Israel’s self-reliance, the fact that its utilities and water supplies aren’t interconnected with its once-hostile neighbors, forces a high level of readiness, Sheffer said.