Bethlehem prepared to mark another sombre Christmas in the traditional birthplace of Jesus under the shadow of war in Gaza.
The excitement and cheer that typically descends on the Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank on Christmas were nowhere to be found: The festive lights and giant tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing. Throngs of foreign tourists that usually fill the square weren’t expected and youth marching bands that gather each year to mark the holiday were absent.
Palestinian security forces arranged barriers near the Nativity Church, built atop the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, and a worker cleared rubbish bins.
The cancellation of Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the town’s economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of it from the Christmas season. Mr Salman said unemployment is hovering around 50% — higher than the 30% unemployment across the rest of the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Finance Ministry.
Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, noted the shuttered shops and empty streets and expressed hope that next year would be better.
“This has to be the last Christmas that is so sad,” he told hundreds of people gathered in Manger Square, where normally tens of thousands would congregate. “I bring you the greetings, the prayers, of our brothers and sisters in Gaza.”
Cardinal Pizzaballa held a special pre-Christmas mass in Holy Family Church in Gaza City on Sunday. “I saw everything destroyed, poverty, disaster, but I also saw life. They don’t give up, so we don’t give up,” he said.
The number of visitors to the town plunged from a pre-Covid high of around 2 million visitors per year in 2019 to fewer than 100,000 visitors in 2024, said Jiries Qumsiyeh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Tourism Ministry.
Bethlehem is an important centre in the history of Christianity, but Christians make up only a small percentage of the roughly 14 million people spread across the Holy Land.
There are about 182,000 in Israel, 50,000 in the West Bank and Jerusalem and 1,300 in Gaza, according to the US State Department.
Since the October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war, access to and from Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank has been difficult, with long lines of motorists waiting to pass Israeli military checkpoints.
Restrictions have also prevented some 150,000 Palestinians from leaving the territory to work in Israel, causing the economy there to contract by 25%.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health officials there, while some 90% of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
Officials say more than half of the dead are women and children, though they do not give a breakdown of how many are civilians and how many fighters.
In the October 7 assault on southern Israel, Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 250 hostages.
