Peace comes to Bethlehem?

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas are due to meet again this week.  Their negotiators are also set for another round of talks on Sunday or Monday after the rather rocky start they made to the Annapolis follow up last week, in an atmosphere poisoned by the announcement of Israeli building plans in occupied East Jerusalem. 

Meanwhile, last week's international donors conference in Paris produced pledges of economic support for the Palestinians and promises of reforms to Palestinian security forces and other aspects of governance. 

All this 'top down' activity has generated plenty of scepticism -- and it is not hard to see why, granted the troubled history of previous such 'peace processes' and the unpromising domestic environment in which Olmert and Abbas are operating.  This domestic setting gets to the heart of the problem.  While majorities on both sides want peace and basically accept the sort of two-state solution which is always on offer, they do not trust each other enough to make the concessions needed to get there.  And each time negotiations fail, the worse it gets.

For this reason, some good people on both sides have concluded that peace is not attainable without true grass roots reconciliation and have created NGOs devoted to promoting it, individual by individual.  Some of the people involved in this work are among the remaining Christians in Bethlehem.  Since the intifada erupted after the failure of the last peace talks in 2000, Bethlehem has seen its main sources of income -- tourism, exports of products and inhabitants travelling out of the town to work -- strangled by the Israeli barrier wall and security checkpoints that surround it.  These charities are also involved in helping the community through these hard times through provision of food, jobs, medical aid, tuition, and business loans.

And it has just been announced that the next international aid conference will be held in Bethlehem.  So apart from the good news from Bethlehem that Christmas represents, there are some glimmers of hope from Jesus’s birthplace this festive season.