Merry Christmas?

Last night, an Israeli, Meir Chai (45) father of 7, was shot dead while driving home in the northern West Bank region of Samaria. This was the fourth Israeli murder in a year in the West Bank, which the Yesha Settler's Council attribute to the removal of IDF checkpoints and the transfer of military control from the IDF to Palestinian Security Forces. The Israeli Government is prepared to spend so much of its political and security capital to release Gilad Schalit, while it allows the conditions for killing other Israelis to increase.
Pres. Abbas of the PA, whose position now is essentially illegal according to PA law due to the cancellation of the January elections, has said he is against terrorism, but so did his predecessaor who chose him, Yasir Arafat. And Abbas has found every excuse to avoid negotiating with PM Netanyahu, producing new preconditions when his precondition of a settlement freeze was accepted. French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy is planning another Mid-East Conference in the New Year in order to try to persuade Abbas to re-enter negotiations with Netanyahu.
Meanwhile there is even more uncertainty in Israeli politics than usual. Six members of the Kadima Party have announced that they intend to leave the Party and maybe join Likud. This caused opposition leader and Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni to issue a harsh statement criticising Netanyahu for deliberately poaching her members and trying to split her party. Netanyahu countered by inviting Livni to a meeting and then reiterating his offer for Kadima to join his coalition. Kadima seems unstable, although it has the largest number of seats of any party, 28, it is rife with dissension, maybe because as a centrist party it is an unnatural amalgam of leftists and rightists, and the latter are feeling that they would prefer to be in the Government with Bibi. So at present the future of this party founded only 8 years ago by Ariel Sharon is in the balance.
While Christmas passes hardly noticed in Israel, nevertheless the festivities go on as usual in Bethlehem. A group of 30 Palestinian Christian pilgrms from Gaza were allowed to cross Israeli territory to attend Mass in Bethlehem, and they found it more difficult to get permission from the fundamentalist Muslim Hamas Government in Gaza than from the Jewish Israeli Government. If there is a genuine message of peace it is hard to hear it above the noise..