This Jerusalem Post staff-ed follows up on a report indicating that Christians will disappear from the PA in 15 years:
This pattern persists. Weiner noted that Bethlehem’s ills are often ascribed to the security fence, because church representatives “sing the PA’s tune” and are quick to censure Israel for everything.
The temptation to do so will increase in the Advent to Christmas, whose celebration in Bethlehem will to no small extent depend on the goodwill of Muslim PA overlords, who make a point of attending the midnight mass each year, all but appropriating the festivities. The grand entries made by Yasser Arafat have still not faded from memory; nor has the empty seat left posthumously for him in the Church of the Nativity, as if elevating him to singular spiritual status.
Like Arafat, his successor Mahmoud Abbas often poses in the guise of Christianity’s protector, implying that it, along with Islam, is menaced by Judaism. Yet false and brazen though this cynical affectation is, it goes unquestioned in most of the world.
