Urban Bethlehem, with a population of about 61,000, is now surrounded by nine Israeli settlements, roads restricted to Israelis, a multitude of checkpoints, 78 physical obstacles, and an Israeli barrier nearing completion on two sides of the town to protect against suicide attacks and other violence, the report said.

The Assoicated Press, Dec 22, 2004

Arafat, 75 was flown from Ramallah to a Paris hospital for treatment of an undisclosed blood disorder and was announced that he had fallen into a coma Nov. 3.

At Ramallah's Holy Family Catholic Church, Father Ibrahim Hijazin acknowledged that one of the main concerns of Christians at the moment is how Islamic groups will react in the face of a power vacuum within the Palestinian National Authority.

By Judith Sudilovsky, Catholic News Service, Nov 8, 2004

Masked assailants beat the daughter of a Douglas County judge Wednesday as she and another Christian relief worker escorted Palestinian children to school in the West Bank.

Rich Meyer, spokesman for the Hebron-based Christian Peacemaker Teams, said Jewish settlers were responsible for the attack.

BY ERIN GRACE AND KRISTIN ZAGURSKI, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER, Omaha, Sep 28, 2004

A group of intercessors who started praying for Bethlehem during the Intifada are calling friends to join for 40 days of prayer for the Holy Land in General and for the Bethlehem area in particular.

The idea was birthed is the heart of Karin Boydgian and Arlette Flefel. In the email request they sent to friends, they ask to pray for "the Seperation Wall to tumble down and to be dismantled peacefully since to say that the wall merely inflicts hardship on the people is a gross understatement. There is a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that is generating a lot of anger. There is fear and uncertainty of what the future holds".

Special for Come and See, Sep 7, 2004

After days of relative calm, the Palestinian Authority was again hit by internal violence over the weekend, as Fatah gunmen abducted foreign workers. The three are members of a Christian charity affiliated with the Union Church in the United States.

Khaled Abu Tomeh, Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2004

A "Peeping Tom" who photographed a woman in the changing room of a Bethlehem area clothes shop sparked a night of rioting between Palestinian Muslims and Christians, witnesses said.

At the height of the hours-long riot, hundreds of Muslims and Christians fought each other with metal rods and stones in the streets of the West Bank town of Beit Sahur, adjacent to Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus.

By Reuters, July 14, 2004

Israeli Journalist Amira Hass writes how the separation fence is seriously damaging the `Christian Triangle' in the Bethlehem area. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian Christians in America are trying to breach the wall of evangelical support for Israeli policies.

Pastor Nihad Salman of the Immanuel Church has tried several times to get permits for his congregants to immerse themselves in the Jordan River, at the point where it flows out of Lake Kinneret. In vain, he says: "People from Indonesia and Korea come and immerse themselves in the Jordan, whereas to us, from Bethlehem, who were born here, whose land this is, it is forbidden."

Amira Hass, Haaretz, June 25, 2004

Jewish journalist Amira Hass doesn't merely report on the experiences of Palestinians - She went to live in Yasser Arafat's tiny, garbage-strewn statelet in Gaza. In this article, she writes about a Christian Choir with members from Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem who are now three separated, closed-off entities, with a sea of Israeli obstacles and bans separating them.

Hass eloquently explains the Christian Palestinian story of these three cities which were once one unit connected by familial and economic ties, with religious rites and services provided by Christian communities. Once the towns were cut off from one another, these links were destroyed.

Amira Hass, Haaretz, June 30, 2004

Lots of bad news comes from Gaza in the last few years. One can say, ?Can something good come out of Gaza??.

The Gaza Baptist Church is the only evangelical Church in the whole of the Gaza Strip and is asking help to preserve the oldest Public Library in the area


Special For Come and See, May 17, 2004

The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran tradition and now has 136 member churches in 76 countries representing 62.3 million of the worlds nearly 66 million Lutherans.

The committee also drew attention to the fact that the construction of the wall is worsening "the already intolerable situation that is forcing the exodus of Palestinian Christians."

Worldwide Faith News archives, Feb 26, 2004