on a mission

You can see it if you look up from the number 18 bus. The Saltire flies from the church tower against the autumn sky. This, however, is no ordinary church. Its foundation stone was laid by General Allenby in 1927 - its stained glass comes from Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, St Andrew's Church of Scotland and hospice has views across to the City of David and the Kidron Valley. Called the Valley of Jehoshaphat in the Book of Joel, here Jews, Moslems and Christians believe God will render final judgment on the living and the dead. Jerusalem has in the past 4000 years been conquered by Pharaohs, Jebusites, Israelites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottomans, the British and Israelis with resulting blood loss - a trend which looks set to continue.

The church and hospice, built in a 1920s colonial style serves as a memorial to the Scottish soldiers killed in the 1915-17 Palestine campaign. It also provides worship for the local ex-pat community and a small group of Arab Christians. Its congregation is swelled by visiting pilgrimage groups and tourists, for whom it can also provide accommodation. Scottish country dancing takes place on the first Saturday of every month in the lounge. Porridge is served for breakfast during the winter months.

For Jerusalem brings the faithful of three religions to worship their God on common ground. As Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai commented: ''The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams. Like the air over industrial cities it's hard to breathe.''

Newly appointed into this cauldron as minister of St Andrew's and Church of Scotland field secretary - which involves the co-ordination of activities of two other Church of Scotland sites, a church and hospice in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and a 360-pupil school in Jaffa - is the Rev Iain Paton. Paton, 56, and his wife Marjorie, 54, have been in Israel since June last year, having formerly been the minister at Newlands South Church, Glasgow, for the previous 12 years.

It was through Newlands that he organised pilgrimage tours to the Holy Land. With a six week stint as locum to Colin Morton, St Andrew's previous minister, in 1990, Paton decided to express his interest in the post

when the position became available with Morton's retirement earlier this year. With the quiet confidence of a bank manager - Paton is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers - he leans back into his chair: ''I have always felt that ministers with large busy and influential parishes can stay too long. It would have been very comfortable to stay at Newlands and then retire. Here in Jerusalem we are a small player within the Christian community: at 2.5% of the country's population we are a community that is in the minority, and that is a great challenge for me.'' He has a difficult challenge in a difficult country.

With Israeli security forces anxious that they may have to face serious threats on two fronts if Palestinian frustration with the peace process boils over into an uprising as bad as the Intifada, the working environment for Paton is not going to be an easy one.

Also, a succession of legal sleights of hand since the 1967 Six Day War and occupation of the West Bank - land that is now defined as state land and whose sale or lease to non-Jews is prohibited - has helped the avowed aim

of the Zionist movement to extend the settlements in what they regard as the Biblical land of Israel. This pre-empts any final agreement on the status of the West Bank. There appears to be a persistent effort by the Israeli right-wing to extend the concept of a greater Jerusalem deeper into the West Bank. It fits in with the long-term strategy of surrounding Jerusalem with a wall of fortress colonies, making it more difficult to eventually restore pre-1967 boundaries and creating a greater Jerusalem to reach Hebron in the south, Ramallah in the north and Jericho in the east.

Paton strongly believes that the Christian community stands for peace and justice but sees injustice all around. It is, however, difficult for the Christian churches to co-ordinate policy. He explains: ''On the one hand you have indigenous churches that are comprised entirely of Palestinian Christians. On the other hand you have some Christian groupings who will very much consider that they have a mission to the Jews, therefore you have a great polarisation. It is a great pity that the Christian community is fragmented in that way''.

Paton sees St Andrews not only as a place of worship but also as a centre for reconciliation and encourages a number of inter-faith groups that regularly meet there. ''We don't just want to be custodians of the holy sites. We want to maintain a living presence, to become involved. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain because people who work here have to get visas and work permits - visas and permits that are controlled by the government,'' he says.

With the recent takeover of houses in Arab East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers funded by Dr Irving Moskowitz, an American bingo millionaire, who lives in Miami and who wants ''. . . to do everything I possibly can to help reclaim Jerusalem for the Jewish people''. With the confidence of the Israeli people also being undermined with recent terror attacks, public burning of Israeli flags and Yasser Arafat's continued embrace of Hammas, the future does not look bright.

But Paton does believe in a future peaceful outcome. ''I can understand where the people are coming from. I can understand the Jewish philosophy of this being the land of the Bible, I can understand when the Arab people say that they have lived here for hundreds of years. They are both sustainable arguments. But the Christian faith also has its origins here - we have a claim also. I think it's only going to be resolved by the smallest grouping - Christians - trying to do something about it because I don't think either of the other two are able to do that.''

Maybe he is right. For resolutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict are to be found not in politics, but in a shared mutual history that goes back 4000 years to Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Maybe the children of Abraham - the two blood brothers, Moslem and Jew - can find a common ground and learn together what the answer is.