[Bethlehem is usually brimming with cheer—and tourists—this
time of year. But the war in Gaza has turned it into a “ghost
town.” ]
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HOW JESUS’S HOMETOWN IS COPING WITH WAR AT CHRISTMAS  
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Alex Shams
December 24, 2023
The New Republic
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_ Bethlehem is usually brimming with cheer—and tourists—this time
of year. But the war in Gaza has turned it into a “ghost town.” _

A Nativity scene in Bethlehem Maja Hitij/Getty Images A Nativity
scene in the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem shows
baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh and placed in a pile of rubble to
show solidarity with the people of Gaza., Maja Hitij/Getty Images

 

Every year at Christmas, the hilltop town of Bethlehem comes alive
with holiday cheer. Parades light up the cobblestone alleyways around
the Church of the Nativity, built over the grotto where Jesus is said
to have been born. Restaurants fill with locals and tourists as
revelers toast Jesus’s birth with _araq_, a Levantine anise liquor,
and Arabic Christmas songs by Lebanese singer Fairuz resound through
the streets.

But not this year.

“Bethlehem is a ghost town,” said Zarzar, who works in the tourism
industry, told me in a telephone interview earlier this month.
“Normally, Christians and Muslims from across Palestine come here to
celebrate Christmas, along with American and European tourists. But
they all evacuated when the war started. Since then, we’ve been
under Israeli military blockade. We are completely cut off.”

 

Since Hamas’s attack on October 7, Israel’s military has limited
movement for Palestinians across the West Bank, where Bethlehem is
located, and conducted daily raids. At last count, 281 Palestinians in
the territory have been killed
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by Israeli forces, and eight have been killed by Israeli settlers.
More than 1,000 have fled
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their homes.

Last month, in response to Israel’s merciless devastation of Gaza,
Palestinian church leaders canceled Christmas celebrations. At
Bethlehem’s Lutheran church, Pastor Munther Isaac has erected a
Nativity scene showing baby Jesus in a destroyed building. “If Jesus
was born today, he’d be born as a child in Gaza under the rubble,”
he explained
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recent sermon.

The Bethlehem area is home to around 100,000 people, a mix of
Palestinian Christians and Muslims. Dotted by religious sites, it
depends on pilgrims to survive; Zarzar estimates that three-quarters
of its economy is linked to tourism. But these days, around
one-quarter of locals are unemployed
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Many of the Old City’s white limestone houses sit empty. Palestinian
Christians are traditionally a majority, but many have emigrated
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due to the occupation’s economic effects: Bethlehem is surrounded by
Israeli checkpoints and Jewish-only settlements, strangling
opportunities for development.

“When people sing ‘O little town of Bethlehem,’ I think
they’ve got it wrong,” said Zarzar, who was born and raised in
Bethlehem’s Old City. “There is no Christmas for Bethlehem. I
would sing instead: ‘O broken town of Bethlehem.’”

From the hills above town, you can see Gaza City only 50 miles away.
Smoke from Israeli airstrikes is visible. Instead of Christmas carols,
Bethlehem hears the thud of Israeli bombs.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed
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an estimated 25,000 Palestinians. These include many victims from the
Palestinian Christian community, including more than a dozen who were
killed when Israel bombed
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a historic Orthodox church where they were sheltering, as well as a
mother and daughter shot dead
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snipers in the courtyard of Gaza’s Catholic church just days before
Christmas.

Isaac lamented
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United States, which gives billions
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in military aid to Israel every year, blocked
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a recent U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire. “They celebrate
Christmas in their land,” he said, “and wage war in our land.”

In the Christmas story, Mary and Joseph take shelter in Bethlehem as
they flee Roman persecution. But Bethlehem’s role as a place of
refuge is not just an ancient one. Just a stone’s throw from the
Church of the Nativity sits the Syriac Quarter. The Syriacs are one of
several Christian communities in the city, in addition to Orthodox,
Catholic, Protestant, and Armenian; their ancestors spoke a form of
Aramaic, like Jesus, and they arrived
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a century ago fleeing a genocide in the Ottoman Empire’s dying days.

Some of Bethlehem’s Syriacs have been displaced multiple times over.
Joseph Khano was born in Bethlehem to Syriac parents who found refuge
there after fleeing their home in what is now Turkey. He grew up in
West Jerusalem. He told me that in 1948, his family was forced to
flee, this time from the Nakba, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians
from what is now Israel. In 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank,
they were displaced yet again.

On Bethlehem’s edges are three refugee camps founded after 1948.
“My grandfather always remembered how they fled into the hills for
safety, living in tents during the rain and freezing cold,” said
Tamara Abu Laban, a professor at Bethlehem University, whose family is
originally from Zakariyyah, a village around 10 miles away. “He told
me how the people of Bethlehem helped them during those times,
receiving them with love and compassion in the churches and
monasteries.”

Over time, the tents were replaced by tin shacks and eventually
cinderblock homes. Today, they have become apartment buildings
stretching toward the sky even as the alleyways below follow the tight
dimensions laid out when they were just footpaths. Dheisheh camp,
where Abu Laban lives, is home to nearly 9,000 people, most of whom
hope to one day return to their ancestral villages inside what is now
Israel. When Abu Laban was growing up, Israel surrounded the camp with
a fence, forcing residents to use a single checkpoint to enter or
leave. Today, Israeli forces raid the area almost daily, and many
young men here have done time in Israeli prison.

For Bethlehem’s refugee communities, Christian and Muslim alike, the
Christmas story is tied to their identity. They, too, came here
seeking refuge. “We are all proud that Jesus is from here; he is
_Ibn Falasteen_, a son of Palestine,” Abu Laban told me. “We want
the world to understand: Jesus was born in this city where we live
under military occupation.”

For Palestinians watching events in Gaza—including scenes
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like the stripping, blindfolding, and parading of hundreds of
Palestinian men for cameras—there is a deep sense of mourning. But
also fear. “We feel like they could just as easily do the same to us
here,” Abu Laban said.

 

 
North of Bethlehem is the road leading to Jerusalem. Since the
mid-2000s, it has been blocked by a 30-foot concrete wall. Israel
calls it a “separation barrier,” while Palestinians know it as the
“Israeli apartheid wall.”

Mohammad Al Azza is the director of Lajee Center, a community hub in
the Aida refugee camp a few feet from the wall. “We grew up playing
in the olive groves next to the refugee camp,” he told me. “But
it’s all off-limits now.”

Israeli soldiers, machine guns hanging off their shoulders, watch over
the camp from guard towers day and night. Israel said the wall was
necessary to stop a wave of bombings. But the wall is deep in the West
Bank, effectively annexing large swathes of Palestinian land.

This includes the tomb of the Biblical matriarch Rachel, a pilgrimage
site next to Aida that once attracted Christian, Muslim, and Jewish
pilgrims. Today, it is walled off from Bethlehem. A checkpoint
restricts access to Jews, and an Israeli military base has been built
beside it.

During Jewish holidays, according to Al Azza, Israeli settlers chant
loudly around Rachel’s Tomb late into the night. “They use
loudspeakers so their voices carry into the refugee camp, keeping
people up,” he said. “We can’t see them, but during Hanukkah,
they yelled loudly to harass us.” It’s a campaign of
“psychological warfare,” he added, to “erase any and all symbols
of Palestinian identity and existence.”

Since October 7, according to people in Aida I interviewed, the
Israeli army has raided the camp almost daily. “They have taken away
dozens of men and boys,” Al Azza said. “All the arrests have been
administrative detention, meaning they don’t charge you with
anything and keep you as long as they want.”

Then, in mid-December, soldiers reportedly
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pulled down a Palestinian flag on the rooftop of the Lajee Center.
They took the flagpole to their army base and mounted an Israeli flag
on it. “They are trying to assert their hegemony and make us afraid
of them,” he said. “They want us to surrender and disappear.”

Most people who visit Bethlehem are unaware of this reality. Most
people who visit Bethlehem avoid these scenes. The tourism industry
there is dominated by Israel; most tourists prefer Israeli guides
since they are not subject to movement restrictions that affect
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Palestinians. Many visitors are told by guides that Bethlehem is
Israeli and don’t even realize it’s Palestinian.

“Once, an American group visited the shop to buy souvenirs,” a
local shopkeeper told me many years ago. “One tourist forgot his
wallet and came back to get it. When I gave it to him, he got excited
and said, ‘You Jews are such honest people! This is why we support
Israel!’ When I told him I was Palestinian, and Muslim, too, he went
quiet and walked away.”

It often seems like foreigners just don’t want to face the reality
of the Palestinians’ plight. Zarzar complained that Christians
around the world sing the name of Bethlehem in churches but are
uninterested in the situation facing Palestinians in Jesus’s
hometown.

“When I talk to people abroad, I always tell them: Christmas was
inspired by Bethlehem. People shouldn’t ignore what’s happening
here,” he said. “If Jesus was born today, instead of 2,000 years
ago, neither Mary nor Joseph could have entered Bethlehem because of
Israel’s apartheid wall.”

Alex Shams [[link removed]] @alexshams_
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Alex Shams is an Iranian American writer and an editor at Ajam Media
Collective [[link removed]]. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology
from the University of Chicago.

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* Bethlehem; Gaza; Palestine; Israel; Christmas;
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