The Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of Churches in Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank and its Central Committee and Central Office extend to each and everyone of you our best wishes for this holiday season. As Christmas coincides with the Muslim Adha feast and the Jewish Hanukah, we also take this opportunity to extend to each and every one of you our sincere wishes for a beautiful and happy season of celebration and for a year of peace and prosperity. May we all learn how to appreciate our similarities and differences and may we all work in the path of justice and reconciliation in the spirit of our great religious traditions.

May you all have wonderful celebrations.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' "This is the great and foremost commandment. And a second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."(Matthew 22:37-40)

 "What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of human beings, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the sufferings of the injured." (Prophet Mohammad according to Bukhari)

"It is the law of love that rules mankind." "Had violence, i.e. hate, ruled us
we should have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that
the so-called civilized men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis
of society was violence." "Where love is, there God is also."

(Quotes from Mohandas Gandhi )