In Bethlehem, a Muted Christmas in War’s Shadow

BETHLEHEM, West Bank – The streets of Bethlehem, usually overflowing with tour buses and colorfully dressed pilgrims in the days before Christmas, are nearly empty this year. So are the hotels. Restaurants that serve visitors are closed, as are most of the shops near the Church of the Nativity.

Few Christmas decorations adorn the narrow, hilly roads leading up to the church, built on a site considered the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ. The giant Christmas tree and holiday bazaars that ordinarily greet visitors at Manger Square are absent as war continues to rage between Israel and Hamas not far away in the Gaza Strip.

In a show of solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza and the devastation there, church leaders here and elsewhere in the Holy Land have asked local Christians to avoid public displays of celebration, and to instead intensify their prayers for the war’s innocent victims. Bethlehem municipal authorities, too, announced the removal of previously installed Christmas decorations “in solidarity with our people in Gaza.”

In a November statement, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem – an ecumenical group composed of leaders of various Christian faith traditions – asked their congregants “to stand strong” with those facing the war’s afflictions by “foregoing any unnecessarily festive activities.” The leaders urged “priests and the faithful to focus more on the spiritual meaning of Christmas in their pastoral activities and liturgical celebrations … holding in our thoughts our brothers and sisters affected by this war and its consequences” and praying fervently “for a just and lasting peace for our beloved Holy Land.”

“This is our way of showing our solidarity with all who have died and who are suffering,” says the Rev. Rami Askarieh, parish priest of Bethlehem’s Church of St. Catherine, after celebrating Sunday Mass in his Catholic church across from Manger Square.

While Christians in the area may understandably miss the holiday cheer, “we will continue to pray, to hold mass, to distribute chocolates and gifts to the children in school. We are teaching the children to pray for peace,” Askarieh says.

Nearby, at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, a traditional decoration holds a sobering twist, with the baby Jesus lying amid the rubble of a ruined nativity scene.

“We’ve seen so many images of children being pulled out of the rubble” in Gaza, said Munther Isaac, the church’s pastor, according to The Associated Press. “And to us this is a message that Jesus identifies with our suffering. He’s in solidarity with those who are oppressed, he’s in solidarity with those suffering. So it’s a message of comfort and hope to us.”

While the rest of the world is celebrating Christmas, “our children are under the rubble,” Isaac said.

Bethlehem, a Palestinian city in the Israel-occupied West Bank just 6 miles south of Jerusalem, has so far escaped the same ravages of war that have gripped Gaza and parts of Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and abduction of some 240 others. Israel’s military retaliation against the surprise attack has resulted in nearly 20,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which do not distinguish between military and civilian casualties or specify what caused them, though most of those killed are said to be women and children.

But the war has deeply affected the residents of Bethlehem in other ways.

A majority of the Bethlehem area’s residents earn their living through tourism, and the war comes at an especially difficult time for that long-struggling industry here, which is still recovering from the bans of the COVID-19 pandemic. About 120,000 tourists were expected to visit Bethlehem for Christmas last year – not too far from the high of 150,000 in 2019.

But this year, the ordinarily busy shops on Milk Grotto Street, around the corner from the Church of the Nativity, are mostly shuttered.

“We’ve seen a handful of groups that entered via Jordan, but none via Israel,” says Virab Pezrosyan, the owner of a Christian souvenir shop on the street. His only customer was a local woman replenishing her supply of rosaries.

“Souvenir shops, hotels, bus companies, olive-wood carvers – everyone is suffering,” Pezrosyan says.

Although Israel has partially reopened checkpoints into and out of Bethlehem, it has not allowed Palestinians in the West Bank to renew canceled work permits that gave them access to sought-after jobs in Israel, though some have been permitted to work in Israeli settlements. According to an April report from the International Monetary Fund, 13% of employed Palestinians previously worked in Israel or the settlements.

From a financial point of view, the situation in Bethlehem “is disastrous,” says Joseph Hazboun, regional director of relief organization CNEWA, the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. “There are many families without any income. If parents are not able to pay their children’s tuition, schools are unable to pay the teachers, who have their own families to support.”

Still, as difficult as the situation is, Bethlehem residents consider themselves relatively fortunate, says Hazboun, who was born in the town: “They know what is going on in Gaza, including to their Christian brethren.”

Right now, CNEWA – with Hazboun’s regional office based in Jerusalem – is focused on raising money to support Gaza’s tiny Christian community, which numbered only around 1,000 before the war. Since the early weeks of the war, at least a third of Gaza’s Christians have either already left or applied for visas to emigrate, according to Hazboun and a church official in Jerusalem.

Eighteen Christians also reportedly were killed after an Oct. 19 Israeli airstrike hit the grounds of the historic Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius, where many Palestinians had taken refuge. Another two Christians at the Holy Family Parish in Gaza were killed by an Israel Defense Forces sniper on Dec. 16, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Seven other people reportedly were wounded.

Before the Hamas attacks in early October, Bethlehem resident Taly Nassar crossed an Israeli checkpoint every day to work at a store in Jerusalem. Her husband, a construction worker, did the same.

“In Israel we earn double, sometimes triple, what we can earn here in Bethlehem,” says Nassar, gathered with her family in the courtyard of the Church of St. Catherine. Her brother, a caretaker of a church in Jerusalem, has not returned to the West Bank since the war began, worried that he will be unable to go back to Israel.

The money Nassar’s family has saved over the year is now going toward necessities like food, she says. Her 7-year-old daughter knows there is a war going on, even if Bethlehem is peaceful: “She told me, ‘I don’t want to eat because the children in Gaza don’t have food.’”

Watching her young daughter play in the church’s garden, Lara Isa, another local resident, says she supports the de facto ban on public Christmas celebrations.

“It reminds us that war doesn’t differentiate between Christians and Muslims, and that we are all Palestinians,” she says.