From the Via Dolorosa

I'm on an eerily quiet section of the Via Dolorosa. A dozen or more Israeli troops are gathered at the end of the street but without that jumpy, schoolboys-with-guns look, seemingly content that the situation's "cooled" in the Old City, as a Muslim restauranteur described it to me just now.

(And precisely on cue, I've just heard a few bangs. Sounded like tear gas grenades, although it's a bit tricky to accurately identify noises by their timbre over the snoring of my dorm-mate Fritz. He's obsessed with Ancient Egyptian chronology so I doubt the trifling matter of imminent violence is much concern.)

Listening to Salam Fayyad yesterday as he addressed the conference, you could have been forgiven for thinking a final status agreement was days away. Though implausibly dismissing the economic aspects of the conflict, he was actually rather impressive. As he enumerated the infrastructure projects completed since his government's accession, described the simplicity of contrasting narratives coexisting, and asserted repeatedly that Palestine was preparing for statehood, it was quite infectious. Tellingly, at one point he arrested a rambling list of vaguely positive minutia to say, "You can tell I'm looking for anything optimistic!"

This moment of bathos added to rather than subtracted from the sense of sincerity he conveyed. But, sitting in the ballroom of the Intercontinental, the bleak words of Fadi, a chap with whom I smoked argila last week, responded to each bureaucratic vignette with the word on the street: "We have no future."

If this bleak prognosis depends to any extent upon the electoral politics of the US, there may be cause for hope, and that's why this conference of evangelicals has interested me so much. Not only has the theology been rigorous and the politics inspirational, but delegates whose passionate attachment is to their Jewish heritage were asserting that faithfulness to this heritage demands the pursuit of justice for the Palestinians. In the past few days I've heard this asserted by evangelical luminaries, pentecostal charismatic zealots, and a Messianic Jew.

150 delegates, perhaps two thirds of which were American, will not change the world over night. But that this number made the trip to the occupied West Bank, alongside reported changes in the attitude to Israel of many Jews in the States, may point to some kind of sea change.

Tonight I hitched a lift from Bethlehem with a staffer at the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. As we talked about our polarised theology, politics and narrativising of history, I thought our genial chat was perhaps too easy. The words on many hearts are those of Psalm 137's wretched finale, words of despair, desperation, and the desire for vengeance: can an overdue change of heart among the citizens of superpowers provide any meaningful response to these cries?