Missing ingredient

Mideast: A new House report says Israeli-Palestinian leaders are ignoring the core of a peace settlement: their Christian population | Jill Nelson

A political cartoon circulated a few years ago showed the three magi, guided by a luminous star, approaching the town of Bethlehem only to be stopped in their tracks by an ominous security wall. Although the magi arrived more than 2000 years ago, the allusion to a monstrous wall around Bethlehem is a present-day reality—one staring the indigenous Palestinian Christian community squarely in the face.

That is one of several hurdles facing Palestinian Christians that U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) hopes to bring to the attention of President Bush. Mr. Hyde recently sent a letter and detailed report to the president outlining the "fundamental challenges facing Christian institutions and their communities in the Holy Land," and asserting that "the resolution of these items is central to any attempt of finding peace in the region," according to Kirsti Garlock, counsel and spokesperson for the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee.