The Orient From on High.

The article presents an editorial on the contrast between the celebrations of Christmas and the lack of peace in the Middle East. As Christmas nears, the contrast between the hopes inspired by our celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace and the realities of conflict in the Middle East weighs ever more heavily upon us. For the darkness that envelops the Holy Land lies like a pall over us in the United States as well. Two and a half years ago, when the Israeli-Palestinian struggle lodged in the site of Jesus' birth at the Basilica of the Nativity, it was hard to imagine the trouble could grow worse, but it has. After the passing of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, pundits prophesy that peace will follow the Palestinian elections in January. Under a pax americana, a U.S. administration that set out to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cultivate the rest of the Arab world has succeeded in allowing its own client to have its way with a defeated people and in alienating the rest of the Arabs in the process. The American non-policy is abetted by a wing of the evangelical churches that sees the expansion of the secular Jewish state of Israel as a necessary preparation for the Second Coming. On January 1, 2005, the octave of Christmas, the church observes annually a World Day of Peace.