Hotels booked, parties planned and lights glittering, Bethlehem is preparing for tens of thousands of pilgrims to overcome Israeli occupation and give the town the best Christmas in years.
”We are hopeful this city will remain peaceful. I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful Christmas,” says mayor Victor Batarseh, determined to look on the bright side sitting next to a plastic fir tree near Manger Square.
Tourism has grown by 60%, and he expects 30 000 to 40 000 tourists — double the number last year — to visit the town where the Bible says Jesus was born in a stable after Mary and Joseph found no room at the inn.
Hotel occupancy has risen from 10% or 15% to 45% in the run-up to the season. Batarseh thinks the 2 000 beds in town will be fully booked this Christmas, reversing a long slump stemming from Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Katherine Korsak (36), a Roman Catholic from Poland, admits she was initially scared about coming to Bethlehem, crossing through the towering cement wall separating Israel from the West Bank and passing military security.
”But this is such an important place for us. We came with joy. Christmas is so close and for us it’s a spiritual experience here,” she says, showing the postcards and wooden carvings she bought, feeling sorry for the vendors.
On November 27, Israel and the Palestinians formally resumed peace talks more than seven years after they collapsed into a deadly cycle of violence that has killed 6 000 people, sent economies into free fall and hiked emigration.
Optimism
But falling levels of violence, revived peace talks and what Batarseh credits as encouragement from churches in promoting support for one of the holiest sites in Christendom are encouraging the tourists back en masse.
”I’m very optimistic. We already see the results,” says sales and marketing manager Haya Saad (27), sipping tea in the Bethlehem Intercontinental, the only five-star hotel in town and its 250 rooms fully booked.
The Intercontinental has doubled room rates this Christmas, capitalising on booming demand particularly from pilgrims from the Far East and Eastern Europe. It promises a fiesta of Christmas carols, Oriental music, parties in the bar with DJs and alcohol every night from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve.
Two months ago, Israeli soldiers entered the hotel looking for a stone thrower, Saad says. ”But it’s getting much better than before.” The presidential suite is being renovated after damage from an Israeli raid in 2001.
But peel away the tinsel and walk in the back streets avoided by the pilgrims bused in and out to the Church of Nativity, and the misery is stark.
Israel’s separation barrier has confiscated farm land, uprooted olive trees, isolated the town from Jerusalem and helped to quicken emigration and keep unemployment at more than 50%. Israeli raids are still frequent.
One Bethlehem olive-wood workshop is modelling nativity scenes complete with a replica separation barrier blocking the wise men from getting to the stable. A British charity has virtually sold out its stocks to worried Christians.
”I hadn’t understood to what extent land was taken and freedom of movement curtailed. They are literally imprisoned. It’s a horrible thing to see a community absolutely destroyed,” says charity director Gareth Hewitt.
Christians
Estimates about the proportion of Christians left here vary from 15% to 25%. Batarseh says they were 92% before Israel was created in 1948.
Samir Qumsieh, general manager of Nativity TV Station, which broadcasts religious services, says ”the nightmare in my head is emigration. It’s deadly. Fifteen years from now, you will not find a Christian.”
World churches should finance building projects to provide jobs and give young men a reason to stay. Instead he bemoans a ”shameful default” by Christians in the world and growing secularism in Europe and the United States.
Exhausted Polish pilgrim Ania Banach changed buses at the checkpoint, was herded around by a guide in a frenzy and hounded by Palestinian vendors, angry that her frenetic timetable was eating into their profits.
”It’s too fast, too crazy and too many people asking me stupid questions,” she says after a Palestinian accuses her of supporting Israel. ”’You live in Israel, you eat in Israel.’ For me it’s like. ‘Where am I?’ I don’t support anyone. I came just to see the holy place. I cannot enjoy it how I would like to. I would like to spend one day.”
Israel says 2,3-million tourists are expected this year, close to the bumper year 2000 — when Pope John Paul II visited and Israel and the Palestinians came close to an agreement at Camp David. Next year will smash records.
The country expects about 60 000 Christian tourists this Christmas, up more than 50% on last year, says Tourism Director General Shaul Tzemach.
At nightfall, buses queue up outside the trap door in the separation barrier to return to Israel, waved through by armed soldiers ordered to ease the restrictions this Christmas as a sign of confidence in a better year to come. — AFP
