NEWS STORY: Bethlehem Struggles for Some Semblance of Routine, Optimism

c. 2000 Religion News Service BETHLEHEM, West Bank _ The Rev. James Van Russell looked over the broad, tree-lined plaza of Bethlehem’s Manger Square, where new white stone pavements gleamed in the midwinter sun, and took in a sharp breath. Russell thought he had read a news report stating that the square, renovated just last […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

BETHLEHEM, West Bank _ The Rev. James Van Russell looked over the broad, tree-lined plaza of Bethlehem’s Manger Square, where new white stone pavements gleamed in the midwinter sun, and took in a sharp breath.

Russell thought he had read a news report stating that the square, renovated just last year for Pope John Paul II’s visit here in March, had been destroyed in the recent Israeli-Palestinian clashes that broke out in September.


Yet here was the peaceful plaza, and the ancient Church of the Nativity beside it, with just a few tourists trickling through its doors. The site was bereft of Christmas trees and decorations. But an outdoor stage was ready, nonetheless, for the choirs that would usher in Christmas Eve celebrations, and for the church leaders who would enter the square in the traditional procession preceding midnight Mass.

“I’m sure that I read in the papers that Manger Square was destroyed. I didn’t expect it to look at all like this,” said Russell, pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Dayton, Ohio.

The scene could be a parable for this year’s celebration of Jesus’ birth in the city of the Nativity. Christmas in Bethlehem this year will not be the massive tourism extravaganza that had been originally planned, with dozens of cultural events leading up to the big day, and expensive Christmas decorations.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will be solemn affairs, intimate almost, in which local Palestinians might for once be able to get a seat in the Church of the Nativity to see and hear firsthand the midnight Mass that is usually packed with foreign sightseers and dignitaries.

But it will be Christmas in Bethlehem nonetheless.

Jerusalem’s Latin (Catholic) Patriarch Michel Sabbah set the tone earlier this week when he appealed to Palestinian Christians to celebrate the holiday with a renewal of faith _ by attending Christmas services to pray for peace and deliverance from the violence and political instability.

“Pilgrims this year will not share with us the midnight Mass. Come yourselves to pray,” Sabbah said in his annual Christmas message.

Russell and some 60 other Christian ministers from around the United States visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority territory just before the Christmas season to see for themselves how Bethlehem and the rest of the Holy Land have weathered the recent unrest.


What they found was an uneasy Christian community, suffering deeply from unemployment, poverty, despair and intermittent Israeli-Palestinian violence on the city’s periphery. But it is a city struggling, nonetheless, to maintain some semblance of routine, to survive and even extend hospitality to the tourists who are bold enough to cross the military blockades for a visit.

“Life has to continue,” said Palestinian Minister Nabil Kassis, who is in charge of the Bethlehem 2000 celebrations, speaking this week at a press conference. “Bethlehem won’t be like it was last year. The suffering that we have undergone calls for us to scale down the festivities, but we still want pilgrims to attend our religious celebrations.”

Once a dusty backwater town in the West Bank, Bethlehem has undergone a face lift over the past five years, with the help of millions of dollars in aid from Western donors. The Bethlehem 2000 project renovated the city’s infrastructure and its historic center, parts of which date back to the Crusader period, and financed the training of new Palestinian tour operators and guides. In a town where there had never been much room at the inn, new hotels were constructed, including a five-star InterContinental.

“In 1999 we hosted 1 million tourists,” boasted Mitri Abu Ayda, Palestinian minister of tourism. “We were fully booked in Bethlehem throughout the year 2000. But now business is dead.”

Intermittent violent clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian youths and snipers along the city’s main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, and in the adjacent Christian suburbs of Beit Jallah and Beit Sahour, prompted Israel to close off the city’s main entrances to tourists in the peak months leading up to the Christmas season.

Israel claimed that the move was intended to protect the security of pilgrims. But Palestinians regard it as an Israeli punishment for the Palestinian uprising, or “intifada,” that has been under way since September.


“We used to have 80 to 100 tourist buses coming into Bethlehem every day. Now, if we’re lucky we’ll see eight or 10 buses entering,” said Palestinian Christian tourism operator Ephraim Nissan. He has doggedly continued to bring small groups of pilgrims into Bethlehem through the city’s back entrances, dodging both the main military barricades and periodic outbreaks of violence.

Only just this week, Israel announced that it would finally open Bethlehem’s main roads to pilgrims in advance of the Christmas season.

But the collapse of tourism, coupled with the overall Israeli military closure on the city’s residents, has left tens of thousands of Palestinians unemployed and on the verge of bankruptcy, if not outright hunger.

Christians, who today comprise no more than about one-third of Bethlehem’s total population, are among those Palestinians most likely to emigrate during such times of tension, because most families have relatives living in the West. The long-term fear among many Christian leaders here is that a viable local Christian community may eventually disappear.

“There are no tourism groups, and with no groups there is no money, and with no money there’s not going to be any Christmas. I’ve already told my children I’m not going to be able to put up a tree or give them presents this year,” said a Christian jewelry salesman, John, from Beit Jallah, who preferred not to give his last name.

“We had a little money saved before this. Now it’s all gone,” he added. “We haven’t been paid for three months. Meanwhile, my neighborhood has been bombed every few days by the Israelis. My bathroom was destroyed by a big shell. We’ve become so pessimistic. Economically, we’ve gone backwards a decade.”


(STORY MAY END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Standing outside the traditional site of the Shepherd’s Field, where the angels were said to have announced the birth of Jesus against a starlit Christmas Eve night, 26-year-old Christian tour guide Rami Ghattas gazed out on the new Israeli settlement of Har Homa. On the hill just opposite, a pastoral view of trees and fruit terraces is slowly giving way to concrete.

Ghattas said the hillside is a constant reminder of the stalled peace process and the economic distress caused as a result. For two months he has had no work and cannot cross over into Israel, even though he is a licensed tour guide. He said Jews and Palestinians aren’t the only ones suffering.

“We Christians like to think of ourselves as the link between Jews and Muslims,” he said. “We can live with both sides peacefully. But we, too, are suffering from stress. We were waiting seven years for the peace process to bring results and it just didn’t end. The Western pilgrims who come here need to think about the `living stones’ of the church which need to be preserved and protected.”

KRE END FLETCHER

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