From The Church Times-
AT THE first Christmas in Bethlehem since the start of the Arab Spring, Palestinians are welcoming the new mood in the region — although without being able to point to specific signs that the revolutionary atmosphere is helping their cause.
A number of dark clouds still hang over the Holy Land, in the form of significant obstacles in the way of the Palestinians’ dream of statehood, and continuing tensions within the community.
On the positive side, international attention was refocused for a time away from the Arab Spring earlier this year, when the Palestinian leadership lodged a demand with the UN Security Council for international recognition of statehood. While this route will be blocked, the Palestinians achieved a breakthrough by being awarded full membership of UNESCO.
But these diplomatic gains have come at a price. Israel has responded by putting new energy into the West Bank settlement expansion programme. So, as the Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyad was turning on the lights of a Christmas tree outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem earlier this month, the Israeli government was approving the construction of 40 new settlement units at Efrat, just to the south of the town.
At the tree-lighting ceremony, Mr Fayyad said that Christmas brought the attention of the world to Bethlehem for a brief moment each year. He might have gone on to say that this applies to the Holy Land and Palestine as a whole. In this year of the Arab Spring, as never before, all eyes have been fixed on developments in the wider Middle East.
More here-
http://churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=122262
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