JERUSALEM — Arkaid Bakley smiles broadly as she turns on the tap to her kitchen sink and watches the water flow. Besides the sink, the kitchen boasts a table and little else, but Bakley, 64, is beaming.

The tiny Christian Quarter apartment she and her husband — who are both Christians — share was in terrible disrepair before Pontifical Mission for Palestine performed what she calls “a miracle.”

The Pontifical Mission for Palestine, a humanitarian aid organization, along with more than a dozen other Catholic organizations are actively assisting Palestinians in need of everything from health care to playgrounds. They repair homes and provide jobs and vocational training to help the needy help themselves.

For 45 years the top-floor oneroom apartment the Bakleys rent had no running water. Their toilet, a hole in the ground dating back to Turkish times, was one flight down a precarious set of stone stairs that is exposed to the elements.

Pontifical Mission for Palestine paid for a waterline to be installed in the Bakleys’ makeshift kitchen, for new floor tiles and for a tin roof to replace the existing asbestos roof. They also installed a modern toilet and sink in the downstairs bathroom. Unfortunately, they were unable to build an upstairs bathroom, but Bakley isn't complaining.

“Look, I don't have to buy bottles of water or go to my neighbor's,” she said.

Pope Pius XII founded the mission in 1949 to care for the estimated 800,000 Palestinians who lost their homes when Arab armies attacked the newly established State of Israel in 1948.

Another of the mission's charities, Catholic Relief Services, often partners with the World Food Bank and the U.S. government's USAID program to provide food, work and shelter to Palestinians in the Middle East.

Stepping Up Aid

Since the start two years ago of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Catholic relief organizations have stepped up their assistance in response to urgent appeals from desperate Arab families.

Due to the intifada and Israeli army closures and curfews, tens of thousands of wage earners are without work and their families sometimes go hungry. Many homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed in Palestinian-Israeli clashes.

Because of the ever-dwindling number of Christians in the Palestinian-ruled areas — Christians comprise only about 2% of the population, and more are leaving all the time — the overwhelming majority of Catholic aid earmarked for Palestinians actually goes to Muslims.

“We work on the basis of need, not creed,” said Don Rogers, the Holy Land's country representative for Catholic Relief Services, explaining why his organization does not distinguish between Christian and Muslim recipients. “Palestinians in general are in need.”

“We are all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims,” insisted Father Raed Abusahlia, former chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. “We all are experiencing the same difficulties.”

According to relief workers, the No. 1 problem for Palestinians is the high rate of unemployment. Catholic Relief Services addresses this problem by funding projects in the West Bank and Gaza — and elsewhere in the Middle East — that utilize the skills of unemployed Palestinians.

“We help create jobs,” Rogers explained, “whether it be through building a road or digging a cistern. We try to give unemployed people their dignity.”

In cooperation with the World Food Program, the organization also distributes basic foodstuffs to some 10,000 families in Bethlehem, Jenin, Hebron and the Gaza Strip.

The Pontifical Mission for Palestine has a similar strategy: to employ local workers in communitybased development projects.

“The greatest need people here have is work,” said Father Guido Gockel, Pontifical Mission for Palestine's regional director. “When men and women can't work, something inside them dies.”

One recent project enlisted the cooking skills of local women in Jericho, who then sold their food in local supermarkets. Another entailed repairing sidewalks.

One ongoing project employs laborers to renovate homes in desperate need of modernization. In the Old City of Jerusalem, for example, many residents reside in hovels on the verge of collapse.

“We recently renovated the home of an elderly man who lost a leg,” said Rose Karborani, a Pontifical Mission for Palestine caseworker, giving a tour of the Old City's Christian Quarter. Due to the small but steady stream of emigration by Jerusalem's Christians and overcrowding in the adjacent Muslim Quarter, the Christian section of the Old City is now predominantly Muslim.

Entering a small stone courtyard shared by several Christian families, Karborani described the old man's plight.

“His rooftop apartment had no glass in the windows,” she said. “His bathroom didn't have a toilet, just a hole in the ground.”

Thankful for Help

Sara Musa, a 70-year-old Christian who resides with her daughter and four other relatives in a dark, damp two-room apartment in the Christian Quarter, is also grateful for the help the family has received from Catholic charities.

Dressed in a traditionally embroidered Palestinian robe and a cross around her neck, Musa showed a visitor how a cadre of volunteers renovated her kitchen and bathroom, which are separated from her flat by the length of a courtyard.

“We have a toilet and a sink in the bathroom,” said Musa's daughter, Rifka. “And the kitchen was expanded, painted and plastered against moisture.”

A large percentage of the Old City's original buildings, some dating back hundreds of years, have few windows and little sunlight, promoting the growth of mold.

Although one of the apartment's two rooms has also been treated against humidity, the domed ceilings are already peeling, revealing a hint of dampness underneath.

“If it weren't for the Catholic organizations and the patriarchate, where my husband works, we'd be in a terrible state,” Rifka Musa said. “They're the reason we've been able to hold on in the Holy Land.”

Michele Chabin writes from Jerusalem.