My dear readers,

As Christmas nears there are signs of fresh conflict between the warring parties.

Today we reproduce an article from Straits Times November 20, 2014 captioned "Jerusalem’s war of neighbours turns more deadly."

JERUSALEM - Amid the condemnations of Tuesday’s deadly attack at a Jerusalem synagogue, there were also disturbing signs of celebration.

A cartoon of a bloody meat cleaver like the one used in the attack circulated on social media. Residents of the Gaza Strip went on a parade, singing victory songs, giving out candy and waving flags. The cartoon was captioned "For you, oh Aqsa", a reference to the Old City holy site at the heart of a recent violent escalation that increasingly seems beyond the control of Israeli or Palestinian leaders.

Four Orthodox Jews died in the attack and the death toll rose on Tuesday night when an injured Israeli policeman died.

The blood splattered on the victims’ prayer shawls and holy books underscored growing indications that extremists on both sides are turning the stalemated battle over territory and identity into a full-throated religious war.

Once again, the assailants – two cousins, who were later killed by police officers – were believed to have acted alone, a new challenge to Israeli intelligence services.

Once again, they were Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, with Israeli identification cards that allowed them to move freely, and with grievances about their treatment in fiercely disputed turf.

And once again, Israel announced a crackdown, promising to demolish attackers’ homes, blocking roads to some Palestinian neighbourhoods, stepping up arrests of stone-throwing youths and bolstering police patrols.

Even Israelis who saw these security measures as necessary worried they could incite a backlash among a population teeming with outrage. Analysts on both sides worried that the cycle of violence and mutual dehumanisation would be compounded by the growing focus on the holy site, where the ancient temples once stood and where Muslims have worshipped for centuries and now fear a Jewish takeover.

"When you bring the religious dimension, it absolutises the conflict - you can divide land, you can divide security, but the sacred is indivisible," said Mr Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy scholar at Hebrew University. "And it also globalises the conflict."

Professor Zakaria Al-Qaq, who specialises in national security studies at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, said he saw signs "that we were infected with the same disease of the region", referring to sectarian battles among Muslims tearing apart Syria, Iraq and other places. "With the religion, there is black and white, either-or, it will be existential," he said.

Though President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority condemned the synagogue killings, other leaders praised them as a defence of Al-Aqsa, the mosque at the heart of the holy site that Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. And Mr Abbas, who last week warned that "a holy war" would ensue if Jews "contaminated" the site, couched his condemnation on Tuesday with a demand "to stop incitement against Aqsa".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of many Israeli politicians to blame Tuesday’s terrorist attack on Mr Abbas’ recent calls to defend the holy site, and emphasised the religious overtones himself.

"Four innocent and pure Jews," he said, were "slaughtered" while "wrapped in tallit and tefillin", the prayer shawls and leather straps that Orthodox men don daily during prayer.

Mr Netanyahu’s repeated declarations that he would not change the status quo at the holy site, where non-Muslim prayer is prohibited, have been dismissed by many Palestinians.

"Somebody needs to think of removing the causes for this, and the causes are rooted within the Israeli policies and practices in East Jerusalem," said Mr Ghassan Khatib, vice-president of Birzeit University in the West Bank.

It is, of course, not the first time the conflict has spilled into religious sanctuaries. Tuesday’s attack was reminiscent of the 2008 killing of eight Jewish students at a Jerusalem yeshiva.

And in a 1994 massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, an Israeli extremist killed 29 Muslim worshippers.

"What feels different in the last couple of months in Jerusalem is the intimacy of the terror," said Mr Yossi Klein Halevi, an author and fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute."

Dear readers, please pray for peace and the soon return of Jesus the Prince of peace. Only He can bring peace.

Yours faithfully in the Saviour’s Service,

Dr SH Tow, Sr Pastor