The Holy Land is preparing to celebrate Christmas by hosting the greatest number of Christian pilgrims since the Second Intifada broke out seven years ago.As many as 60,000 pilgrims are on their way to celebrate Christ's birth, according to Israel's tourism ministry.
However, with relations between Israel and Palestinians always strained, it was difficult to find much evidence of holiday cheer in Bethlehem this week, except for the religious souvenirs and Santa Claus knick knacks crowding shop windows near Manger Square, where a pine tree festooned with red and gold balls looked down on the Church of Nativity, built in the ninth century atop the spot where it was said that Jesus was born.
To ease the travellers' passage and, in the words of a senior bureaucrat, "to make it as profound an experience as possible," the Israeli government had made special arrangements with its security forces and the Palestinian Authority to speed them through a checkpoint at an opening in the tall concrete barrier that now surrounds much of Bethlehem, separating it from nearby Jewish settlements in the West Bank and from Jerusalem, which is about 10 kilometres away.
Special exit permits have also been granted that will allow about 8,000 of the 30,000 Palestinian Christians in the Bethlehem area to travel to Jerusalem to worship or visit relatives during the Christmas season.
"We believe that the pilgrims are a bridge of peace between us and the Palestinians," said Rafael Ben-Hur, deputy director general of Israel's tourism ministry. "We can say that we're getting back to the number of Christians that came here before 2000 and we can say that there is an atmosphere of peace."
Miserable lives
"Aside from a few nice lights around the Church of the Nativity, it doesn't feel like Christmas at all," complained 20-year-old Khoulad Awad, a Roman Catholic who studies hotel management at Bethlehem University. "Our lives are so miserable. There is no reason for us to be happy now."
Awad and her classmate and best friend, Abir Mukkaker, said that the moment they could find a Western country willing to accept them as immigrants, they would leave Bethlehem forever, joining a long and accelerating exodus from the Holy Land that made Mukkaker think "that in a few years, the Christians will all be gone."
Arab Christians, who belong to a dozen or more different churches that often quarrel among themselves, have been leaving the Middle East in large numbers since the 19th century, but the numbers have accelerated in recent years.
About 20 years ago, there were still about 50,000 Christians in Jerusalem and the West Bank; today, there are about 40,000, with most of them in and near Bethlehem, according to Uwe Grabe, a Lutheran pastor who leads the German-speaking congregation at the Christ the Redeemer Church in Jerusalem.
Christ's birthplace, which still had a Christian majority a few decades ago, but where Christians now represent about 20 per cent of the population, had lost 5,000 to Europe and North America in the past few years.
The explanation often cited by the Israeli media and officials for the flight of Palestinian Christians has been that they lived in fear of their Muslim cousins. As so often is the case in the Middle East, many Palestinians had a different view.
"Our relations with the Muslims is not really the problem," said George Abdo, a social worker with the Shepherd Society. "It is the occupation and all that it produces - the economic, social, medical and educational hardships."
The main reasons for the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem mentioned by those Christians who have remained was closures, curfews, checkpoints and the barrier that Israel has erected around most of the city and across much of the West Bank to prevent terrorists from entering any of the largest Jewish settlements there or reaching Israel.
"I don't think the wall was designed to harm Christians, but it has cut the Christians of Bethlehem off from Jerusalem, which they were very connected to through their schools and their patriarchates," said Salim Menayer, a Palestinian Christian of Israeli nationality who is dean of academics at the Bethlehem Bible College. "This has been part of an Israeli drive to achieve a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and maintain Jewish control there.
"When Israelis say that Christians leave because of Muslim pressure, it is not the major factor; however there is some truth to that, too. There is a lack of order and a weak central government in the territories, while at the same time there has been a rise of Islamic parties across the Arab world who have the perception that Christians elsewhere have taken Israel's side in the conflict. Islamic parties say that Islam is the solution, and this has marginalized Christian Arabs."
Uwe Grabe, the Lutheran minister, agreed that there were competing ideological answers for the departure of Christians from the Holy Land. One held that it was entirely the fault of the "pressure cooker" created by the Israeli occupation.
The other held that this was a part of a clash of civilizations between Muslims and the Christian West and that Muslim violence towards Christians that has occurred from time to time in the West Bank, and Gaza was proof of that.
Broken economy
A huge contributing factor was that the Palestinian economy was feeble and some people "will always emigrate when living conditions are better somewhere else," Grabe said. "Palestinian Christian private schools are a recipe for emigration. It can empower them to build their society here, but others use it to emigrate."
One of those hoping to leave is Ruben Kahvedjian. The 29-year-old accountant applied for a green card earlier this month at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem.
"It is a Tom and Jerry situation where each side blames the other for Christians leaving," said Kahvedjian, who grew up in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.
"Christians are squeezed from both sides. As much as we are part of Palestinian culture, and while they will back always back us in a dispute with someone who is Jewish, if the dispute is between a Muslim and Christian, they will support the Muslim."
The return of Christian pilgrims for Christmas this year has given George Abdo a slight hope that the Palestinian Christian community in Bethlehem might still have a chance to survive.
"Tourism is our main source of income and even in the past two months, we have really seen the economic situation improve," he said. "Having a lot of Christians here for Christmas means that they think that Bethlehem is once again safe for them. Everything for Christians who still remain here depends on peace. The only way to guarantee a Christian future in the Holy Land is if peace can somehow take hold in the next five years."
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