AP News, October 15th, 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday she expects an emotional experience when she travels to Bethlehem, the Biblical birthplace of Jesus, this week.
The daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, Rice plans to visit the Palestinian town for the first time Wednesday. She will meet civic leaders and make a pilgrimage to the Church of the Nativity, built over Jesus' traditional birth grotto.
"I'm really looking forward to going to Bethlehem," she told reporters at her Jerusalem hotel after two days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials aimed at preparing a U.S.-hosted peace conference this fall. "I think it will be kind of emotional for me."
"I am myself deeply religious so just the name is evocative in ways that I can hardly describe," Rice said, noting that she had similar feelings when going to other holy sites in previous visits to the region.
"It's like when I saw the Sea of Galilee for the first time and went to the Mount of Olives for the first time and stood at the Mount of Beatitudes and read from my own personal Bible the Beatitudes," she said.
Christians believe that Jesus walked on water on the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, appeared to his disciples and ascended into heaven on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem after his resurrection and delivered the Sermon on the Mount at the Mount of Beatitudes in the Galilee.
Rice said her time in Bethlehem is part of a wider outreach to assure ordinary Israelis and Palestinians that the United States is serious about helping them reach peace.
"In the final analysis it's about them," she said. "It's about Israeli citizens and Palestinian citizens living without fear and living with a certain dignity.
"And it's about understanding that the United States sees this as important from a geo-strategic diplomatic sense but also sees the human side if this. I hope that's a message I'll get to deliver in Bethlehem."
