Two and a half years of the second intifada has ruined Israel's tourist industry. So imagine the joy when, earlier this year, Benny Hinn-a popular American televangelist, prophet and faith healer-offered to muster a force of 2,000 fellow Christians for a visit to Israel in October. Conventional tourism was not the point, Hinn stressed in an interview with the Jerusalem Post: "We love to come here and pray for the coming of the Lord," he said. "A true Christian loves Israel, and anyone who doesn't is not a true Christian. We stand by you [Israelis] no matter what."

Israel's tourism minster Benny Elon, a rabbi, is still awaiting the messiah, while Benny Hinn believes that he has been and gone some 2,000 years ago, but will be back again soon. None the less, Hinn and Elon are both agreed on the need for the greatest possible of Greater Israels. The televangelist has reached that position by way of the literal reading of the Bible's Old Testament characteristic of America's Protestant evangelical movement. He has understood that in God's promise to Abraham, the Jews were given a vast land, one which at its fullest extent would comprise the bulk of the middle east, and certainly the West Bank and Gaza.

Similarly, Elon's National Union party-one of the small right-wing parties that keeps Ariel Sharon's government in power-opposes the current "road map" and envisages a Palestinian state only in Jordan. In late April, Elon was in the West Bank assuring Jewish settlers that there are powerful Christians in America who will not let them be deprived of their homes, "people who are wild about Israel and believe in the annexation of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and even the transfer of Palestinians from the land of Israel," Ha'aretz newspaper reported him saying, "... compared to them I'm a dove."

Is Benny Elon deluding himself and the settlers about how powerful those pro-Israeli Christians are? It is common knowledge now that America's Jewish lobby, and the neoconservatives in government who place Israel's security at the heart of their plans for a new-look middle east, are not alone in their concern for Israel. What is not so clear is what proportion of the 25 per cent of the American electorate who claim to belong to "evangelical Protestant churches"-four out of five of whom back the Republicans-feel strongly enough about Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza on biblical grounds to try to hobble any US-led peace plan.

HOW POWERFUL ARE THE CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS?
Historically, most varieties of Christianity in America have tended towards philosemitism, even in the otherwise reactionary south, where Jews had the advantage of being white Europeans rather than black Africans. And, today, a broad swathe of the American public simply favours Israel as a US ally, or as a lone capitalist democracy in the middle east. Such general sympathy is strongly reinforced by the pro-Israeli feelings of evangelical Christians. Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington says: "Evangelicals may disagree about how to interpret the Old Testament but they have an intuitive attachment to Israel-they still feel like Israel is special." Is that predisposition a guide to ballot box behaviour?

John Green, director of the Ray C Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at Ohio's Akron University, specialises in monitoring the political influence of religion. He has calculated that 10-15m of the 29-30m evangelical Christians who nominally support the Republicans (the actual vote for Bush in 2000 was 50m) are "people who think that it is contrary to God's will to put pressure on the Israeli government." For such people, concern for Israel is second only to the fight against abortion. These 10-15m evangelicals are often called Christian Zionists, although they would identify themselves more vaguely-as born-again Christians, as "fundamentalists" in the early 20th-century American meaning of the word, or as Bible-believing Christians. After more than 20 years' close study of this subset of evangelicals, Green prefers the theological tag-"dispensationalists."

Dispensationalism is a theology that first appeared during America's religious "great awakening" of the early 19th century, but that is now enjoying a renaissance. This is perhaps because, by dividing world history into seven distinct eras or "dispensations," it calculates that we are now entering the seventh and last, which means the end of the world is drawing nigh and pressure is mounting to be counted among the saved. Dispensationalists equate modern Israel with the Israel of the Old Testament. Today's Israelis are, for them, the descendants of Abraham to whom God gave the land of Israel in perpetuity.

Where they diverge from religious Jews is in their belief that Christ's second coming will not happen until the Jews are restored to Israel and some of them brought to believe in Christ. The battle of Armageddon and the end of the world as we know it must follow, but the prize will be Christ's 1,000-year reign of peace. The in-gathering of the Jews to Israel in the early 20th century, the creation of modern Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem by the Israelis in the six day war were proofs of the working out of God's plan.

It follows that there can be no Palestinian state in biblical Israel; the Jewish settlements on the West Bank must remain and be expanded. Jerusalem must be Israel's capital, rather than shared with a Palestinian state, and the city's holiest mosques-the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa-must one day be demolished to make way for the biblically forecast building of the Jews' Third Temple. To the dispensationalist way of thinking, the logical end of all these biblical imperatives is that today's Israel must receive unconditional support-financial, diplomatic and military-as she battles her Muslim enemies for the right to an existence ordained by God.

"These ideas are very common in religious groups and organisations that matter in US politics," says Green. "In a typical Baptist church service you would probably have a reference to the 'end times' and to the modern state of Israel." It was Richard Land, a leader of the big Southern Baptist Convention-a powerful force in the southern states-who coined the phrase "the Bible belt is Israel's safety belt." Land told the Los Angeles Times a year ago that he could not visit a Baptist church without people begging him not to abandon Israel.

Southern televangelist John Hagee declares on his website: "We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of man, but Israel was created by an act of God!" and goes on to list "solid Bible reasons why Christians should support Israel"-Genesis 12:3, Romans 15:27, Matthew 25:40, Psalms 122:6, Luke 7:5. In 1998, he justified his collection of $1m to help sustain the West Bank settlements with a simple appeal to a higher authority: "I am a Bible scholar and a theologian and from my perspective the law of God transcends the law of the US government." Hagee is not alone in his direct support for illegal settlements. Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC), founded in 1995, is running a twinning programme between settlements and US churches. Some 50 settlements have so far taken up the offer.

Unlike most American upsurges in fundamentalist religion, the dispensationalists did not fade away. "There has been a permanence about them, probably on account of their well-developed theology," says John Green. Back in 1979, the popular dispensationalist televangelist Jerry Falwell was pouring cold water on President Jimmy Carter's efforts at brokering a middle east peace, with a declaration that there was "not going to be any real peace in the middle east until the Lord Jesus sits down upon the throne of David in Jerusalem."

Falwell's efforts on Israel's behalf were recognised by Menachem Begin with the gift of a Lear jet. With Reagan's election in 1980, Falwell's supporters identified more openly with the Republican party and his moral majority became an important lobby on the party. In the 1990s, the moral majority gave way to the Christian coalition, headed by dispensationalist televangelist Pat Robertson-whose Christian Broadcasting Network acquired a news channel devoted to Israel last year-and his successor, Ralph Reed.

Green says that in the 1990s "the real story was the politicising of these folks." He attended Christian coalition conferences in Washington, which ran workshops about how to fundraise, how to run for office in the Republican party, in local government, on school governor boards. "Nine tenths of those events were about straight political organisation; only one tenth the heavy-duty Christian message," he says. In the run-up to the 2000 elections, the Christian coalition masterminded the distribution of 70m voter guides outside evangelical churches in support of Bush.

The fact that the Christian coalition is now withering away-figures are hazy, but its membership is estimated at around 600,000 compared to its heyday of 2m-is seen as a mark of success. "There's now a feeling that there need not be another moral majority or Christian coalition because the Republican party is the more useful organisation," says Green.

Neither President Bush nor his senior colleagues are themselves dispensationalists. Bush and others-including his speechwriter Michael Gerson-fall into the broader evangelical Christian camp. But Bush speaks their language and it was his admission of having sunk into sin prior to being born again as a Christian that swung the evangelical vote in his favour in the 2000 presidential primaries. Green notes that, thanks to low voter turnout, "primaries are perfectly designed for well-organised ideological groups." In many areas, especially the south, the evangelicals can influence Republican primary candidate selections at all political levels. Evangelicals are also more likely to vote than most people.

Bush can be reasonably sure of the evangelical vote again in 2004, support which is now said to be second in importance only to the business community, and more powerful than the gun-owner, anti-tax and libertarian lobbies which make up a large part of the Republican coalition. The only way Bush may jeopardise that support is by trimming too close to the centre or by pushing too hard on Israel for a peace deal. Voters of the Christian right would not switch to vote Democrat, but they might just stay at home.

On 28th May this year, Michael Freund in the Jerusalem Post complained that Sharon had betrayed the Zionist vision by acceding to the road map. His remedy? "Only by putting the president on notice that in the 2004 campaign, American Christians and Jews will forge a direct linkage between how they vote and how he acts in the middle east, can we hope to thwart this devious plan."

If Bush found that he was in danger of losing a few million evangelical votes by forcing the road map on Israel, would he rethink? Green thinks he would. It depends perhaps on whether they would be replaced by enough moderates more likely to vote for Bush.

ARMAGEDDON CAN WAIT
Not all Jews in Israel or America feel comforted by the support of dispensationalists. They note that two thirds of Israeli Jews are expected to die in the great battle of Armageddon, while the remaining third of Jews convert to Christianity. Gershom Gorenberg, Israeli author of The End of Days, has protested that Christian Zionists "don't love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play." Writing in the Washington Post last October, Gorenberg warned that Christian Zionists are offering "support for hard-line policies that endanger Israel in the name of fundamentalist theology." Given the Palestinian birth rate, Arabs in Israel (including the occupied territories) will soon be outnumbering Jews unless they are given a viable separate state. Gorenberg is not alone among liberal Israelis in highlighting this fact and in viewing the Christian Zionists' hostility to the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as more likely to result in the end of Israel than in the end of the world.

But Likud governments welcomed the influence people like Falwell enjoyed with Reagan. As long as Israel is encircled and terrorised by Arab enemies, argue Likud politicians, she needs any friends she can get. Armageddon can wait. Sharon knew just how to appeal to his Christian supporters in the US when Colin Powell suggested he stop expanding the settlements. "So you want settler women to have abortions?" was his reply.

In 1980, when 13 embassies pulled out of Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in protest at Israel's declaration of Jerusalem as her capital, Christian support for Israel assumed the solid form of the self-declared "International Christian Embassy Jerusalem" (ICEJ). Its official-sounding title infuriates the city's traditional Christian churches, whose local congregations are mainly Arab. The holy land's Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches are more concerned with the Palestinians and Christ's New Testament teaching about justice than with the Jewish land covenants. Christianity speaks with two distinct voices in the holy land and there is no doubting which finds the greater favour with the ruling power.

The ICEJ's entrance hall is hung with photographs of Likud leaders who have applauded ICEJ's efforts on Israel's behalf. Notable by his absence is Ehud Barak, the Labour leader who came closest to forging a peace with Arafat. With its 60-strong staff, a budget estimated at $8m a year in 1999 and a membership of some 100,000, the non-profit-making ICEJ devotes the bulk of its resources and energies to helping fulfil prophecies relating to the Jews and their land. Since communism's collapse in 1991 the ICEJ has funded the transportation of 60,000 Soviet Jews to Israel, 15,000 of them on ICEJ-chartered jumbo jets.

The ICEJ does not push the finer points of dispensationalism, but rather the line that Israel is owed support after all that the Jews have suffered. Every issue of its newsletter contains a news round-up and a reiteration of its curious mission: "to challenge the Church to take up its scriptural responsibilities towards the Jewish people, to remind Israel of the wonderful promises made to her in the Bible, and to be a source of practical assistance to all the people of the Land of Israel." One recent issue ran a r鳵m頯f what the organisation had achieved over a six-month period. It included sponsoring two "appreciation dinners" for Israeli soldiers returning from the West Bank, collecting $65,000 for a bulletproof bus for schoolchildren in the settlement of Efrat, and funding the creation of two protected playgrounds in the settlement of Gilo.

David Parsons is an articulate young lawyer from North Carolina and the ICEJ newsletter's editor. He justifies the ICEJ's Bible-based interference in the hottest political spot on earth in the following way: "The Bible says this conflict will consummate in the end of the world. We can't just sit on the sidelines and let Islam lead the Jewish people into another Holocaust. This war is about the restoration of the Jews to Zion which God promised. This conflict is prophesied!"

Parsons credits Yasser Arafat with being the "father of global terrorism... the one who taught the other Muslims how to do it." He agrees with Sharon that Israel's battle with terrorism is as justifiable as America's. "9/11 was an attempt to drive a wedge between the US and Israel and send a message 'If you'll sacrifice Israel, this won't happen.'"

His citing of Bible chapters and verses hampers normal discussion. But before he concedes his inability to convert me, he tells me that the road map is far too generous to the Palestinians, and the EU's influence in its writing far too strong. "Personally, I wouldn't give the Palestinians any West Bank for their state. I would give them the Gaza strip for a ten-year trial period. Do they deserve any more after all this terrorism?" President George W Bush is a man the ICEJ is more or less happy to do business with. "I don't think he has the full revelation but I think he's in our camp... he's shown favour to Israel over these past two years of terror-he's allowed Israel to go into those terror havens and clean them out." But Parsons thinks Bush has also made a big mistake: he should never have described Islam as a religion of peace.

Every autumn, intifada or no intifada, the ICEJ "comforts" Israel by bringing together thousands of Christian Zionists from places as far-flung as the US, Australia, Norway, Brazil, South Africa and Britain, to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles in anticipation of a time after the second coming when "all the nations" will come to Jerusalem and rejoice. Participants also attend lectures, some of them aimed at correcting what the ICEJ regards as a pro-Palestinian slant to news coverage. No one misses the climax of the week-long events-the Israeli prime minister's address. Last September, to cheering and whistling from 2,500 people, Sharon insisted on Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel.

The Christian Zionists' annual solidarity march through west Jerusalem drew few Israeli spectators last year, but an editorial in the Jerusalem Post urged its Jewish readers to view the marchers as sincere lovers of Israel rather than as Christians on a mission to convert them. All they were interested in, it said, was living "in accordance with God's promise to Abraham: 'I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you.'" The Christian Zionists do, indeed, argue that America has prospered by welcoming Jews to her shores and supporting Israel to the tune of $3.5bn a year. And who can doubt God's curse on those nations that have cursed Israel? Germany was divided for the second half of the 20th century after the Holocaust, and Russia suffered 75 years of communism after the 19th-century pogroms. Who can wonder that the Muslim world has failed to prosper?

THE "LEFT BEHIND" BOOKS
The ICEJ is not alone in its nurturing of the love between Israel and American Christians. An Israeli rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, has been fundraising to help Jews immigrate to Israel for 15 years. His Jerusalem Friendship Fund raised $15m among Christians in 2001-2 and his Jerusalem Prayer Team counts Attorney General John Ashcroft, Jerry Falwell and Richard Land among its members.

Another leading backer is the Californian author of the bestselling "Left Behind" series of books, Tim LaHaye. LaHaye and co-writer Jerry Jenkins have done more than anyone else in recent times to propagate the dispensationalist vision into the mainstream. Their ten books have sold some 50m copies in eight years. The last, The Remnant, went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list last year. Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne was the bestselling novel for 2001.

Dispensationalist LaHaye has taken the Old Testament prophets, and the Bible's book of Revelation with its hair-raising predictions about the prelude to Christ's second coming, and imagined how the end of the world might come to pass in a contemporary form. Jenkins adds the style of a violent and pacy thriller.

LaHaye's "premillennial" form of dispensationalism presupposes a belief that before the battle of Armageddon and Christ's second coming there will be a "rapture" in which those whom God chooses to reward with his protection from the horrors of the "end times" will be whisked away to safety in heaven. LaHaye's imagined "rapture" is caused by an attack on Israel and takes place in the first book of the series, while his hero is on board an aeroplane. Those left behind must suffer seven years of "tribulation" under the rule of the antichrist. LaHaye's antichrist is the Romanian head of the Global Community-a barely disguised UN-whose evil cohorts are called "peacekeepers" and whose headquarters is modern Babylon, Baghdad. His left behind undergo various trials and adventures while battling the antichrist, before gradually coming to recognise Christ. The Jewish hero is a charismatic rabbi who has turned to Christ. The series scorns everyone who is fooled by the tricks of the antichrist-in particular his notions of world peace, multicultural understanding or disarmament.

LaHaye was a co-founder and board member of Jerry Falwell's moral majority. When a guest on CNN's Larry King Live, he declared himself delighted that his books were bringing people back to the book of Revelation. He has also shared his views on 9/11 with the audience of Falwell's show, Listen America, saying, "We're in a religious war and we need to aggressively oppose secular humanism." His website states that "God's prophetic time clock of end time events" began ticking when Israel was created.

WAXING OR WANING?
"Dispensational belief is not like a belief in UFOs," says John Green. "These beliefs have relevance for policy questions... When Bush identifies unilateral US action with God's plan, the Left Behind series may have laid the foundation for that appeal to make sense."

The influence of the dispensationalists and the broader world of the Christian right should not be exaggerated-and their numbers appear not to have grown for 15 years. A recent poll found that as many as six out of ten born-again Christians did not rely on the Bible or church teachings as their primary source of moral guidance. Nevertheless, their impact on American culture and politics is significant and potentially powerful enough to obstruct a middle east peace agreement.

With a popular born-again Christian in the White House operating in a climate of fear created by the war on Islamic fundamentalist terror and with renewed engagement with the middle east, it is hard to see how or why their influence should wane.