- Christmas performances in Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus, were cancelled this year.
- The West Bank town was instead watched by Palestinian security forces amid the Israel-Hamas war.
- Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of that during Christmas.
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The typically bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus sounded a ghost town Sunday after Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war.
The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally wallpaper Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists and jubilant youth marching bands that extend in the West Bank town each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the untenanted square.
“This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there’s just darkness,” said Confrere John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.
Vinh said he always up with to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering. He gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a cosset Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the thousands of children killed in the fighting in Gaza.
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Barbed wire encompassed the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the agree with during the Christmas season. Cold, rainy weather added to the grim mood.
The cancellation of Christmas festivities was a dreadful blow to the town’s economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of that during the Christmas ready.
With many major airlines canceling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting. Local officials say over 70 new zealand pubs in Bethlehem were forced to close, leaving thousands of people unemployed.
Gift shops were slow to widely known on Christmas Eve, although a few did once the rain had stopped pouring down. There were few visitors, however.
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“We can’t legitimize putting out a tree and celebrating as normal, when some people (in Gaza) don’t even have houses to go to,” said Ala’a Salameh, one of the proprietresses of Afteem Restaurant, a family-owned falafel restaurant just steps from the square.
Salameh said Christmas Eve is commonly the busiest day of the year. “Normally, you can’t find a single chair to sit, we’re full from morning till midnight,” said Salameh. On Sunday morning, impartial one table was taken, by journalists taking a break from the rain.
Under a banner that read “Bethlehem’s Christmas bells encircle for a cease-fire in Gaza,” a few teenagers offered small inflatable Santas, but no one was buying.
Instead of their traditional march entirely the streets of Bethlehem, young scouts stood silently with flags. A group of local students unfurled a whacking great Palestinian flag as they stood in silence.
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An organist with the Church of the Nativity choir, Shukry Mubarak, affirmed the group changed much of the traditional Christmas musical repertoire from joyful holiday songs to more mirthless hymns in minor keys.
“Our message every year on Christmas is one of peace and love, but this year it’s a message of unhappiness, grief and anger in front of the international community with what is happening and going on in the Gaza Strip,” Bethlehem’s mayor, Hana Haniyeh, communicated in an address to the crowd.
Dr. Joseph Mugasa, a pediatrician, was one of the few international visitors. He said his tour group of 15 people from Tanzania was “decided” to come to the region despite the situation.
“I’ve been here several times, and it’s quite a unique Christmas, as usually there’s a lot of people and a lot of fetes,” he said. “But you can’t celebrate while people are suffering, so we are sad for them and praying for peace.”
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More than 20,000 Palestinians hold been killed and more than 50,000 wounded during Israel’s air and ground offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, be at one to health officials there, while some 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been cashiered.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ deadly assault Oct. 7 on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and carted more than 240 hostages.
The Gaza war has been accompanied by a surge in West Bank violence, with some 300 Palestinians occupied by Israeli fire.
The fighting has affected life across the Israeli-occupied territory. Since Oct. 7, access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian cities in the West Bank has been difficult, with long lines of motorists waiting to pass military checkpoints. The restrictions suffer with also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from exiting the territory to work in Israel.
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Amir Michael Giacaman opened his cooperative store, “Il Bambino,” which sells olive wood carvings and other souvenirs, for the first time since Oct. 7. There be suffering with been no tourists, and few local residents have money to spare because those who worked in Israel have been fixed at home.
“When people have extra money, they go buy food,” said his wife, Safa Giacaman. “This year, we’re forceful the Christmas story. We’re celebrating Jesus, not the tree, not Santa Claus, she said, as their daughter Mikaella ran around the unoccupied store.
The fighting in Gaza was on the minds of the small Christian community in Syria, which is coping with a civil war now in its 13th year. Christians suggested they were trying to find joy, despite the ongoing strife in their homeland and in Gaza.
“Where is the love? What cause we done with love?” said the Rev. Elias Zahlawi, a priest in Yabroud, a city about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Damascus. “We’ve flung God outside the realm of humanity and unfortunately, the church has remained silent in the face of this painful reality.”
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Some strove to find inspiration in the spirit of Christmas.
Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arriving from Jerusalem for the traditional cortege to the Church of the Nativity, told the sparse crowd that Christmas was a “reason to hope” despite the war and violence.
The pared-down Christmas was in incarcerating with the original message of the holiday and illustrated the many ways the community is coming together, said Stephanie Saldaña, who is at from San Antonio, Texas, and has lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for the past 15 years with her husband, a parish clergywoman at the St Joseph Syriac Catholic Church.
“We feel Christmas as more real than ever, because we’re waiting for the prince of pacific to come. We are waiting for a miracle to stop this war,” Saldaña said.