Archbishop urges Holy Land trustThe Press Association Sunday December 24, 10:06 PM
Archbishop urges Holy Land trustThe Archbishop of Canterbury will urge the world not to look away from the problems in the Holy Land as he delivers his Christmas Day sermon.
Dr Rowan Williams will say it was "chilling" to find on his recent visit to the region an "almost total absence" of any belief in a political solution.
What is needed to create trust and hope is ordinary people reaching out to the region, he is to argue.
Both Israeli and Palestinian communities feared a future in which they were allowed to disappear "while the world looks elsewhere", Dr Williams will say.
"Go and see, go and listen, let them know, Israelis and Palestinians alike, that they will be heard and not forgotten," Dr Williams will say.
"Both communities in their different ways dread - with good reason - a future in which they will be allowed to disappear while the world looks elsewhere.
"The beginning of some confidence in the possibility of a future is the assurance that there are enough people in the world committed to not looking away and pretending it isn't happening.
"It may not sound like a great deal, but it is open to all of us to do - and without friendship, it isn't possible to ask of both communities the hard questions that have to be asked, the questions about the killing of the innocent and the brutal rejection of each other's dignity and liberty."
In the sermon, to be delivered at the Christmas Day service at Canterbury Cathedral, he will also speak of how he was inspired by a hospital director in Bethlehem who told him: "The poorest deserve the best."
It came on a visit to a creche attached to the town's Holy Family Hospital, while he cradled a new-born child in his arms, and he asked hospital director Robert Tabash why the standard of care was so good despite the harsh economic situation.
Related UK News
(The Press Association Journal Internet)
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/24122006/344/a ... trust.html 
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