Letter from Mideast: Walled city of Bethlehem falls quiet as Christmas nears

Before visiting Bethlehem, the city best known as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, I scoured countless online travel guides for tips and advice."Expect long lines," many reviews cautioned. Yet what I encountered was jarringly different: a place wrapped in an unsettling silence. Standing alone in Manger Square, in the shadow of the Church of the Nativity, I struggled to reconcile the bustling scenes described in guidebooks with the emptiness before me. The square, which should have been teeming with pilgrims as Christmas approaches, felt like a stage after the final curtain. "In the past, this place was alive with tourists," said Hamza, a Palestinian guide I met outside the church. A seasoned veteran of Bethlehem's tourism industry, he nostalgically recalled the crowds that once filled the square, gesturing toward the vacant space where queues once stretched for hundreds of meters. "The war changed everything here," he lamented.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict that erupted in October 2023 has transformed this historic city, though not through direct violence. While Bethlehem has been spared the bombs, the shadow of conflict has driven visitors away, leaving behind a profound silence that speaks volumes about the region's turmoil. "The tourists are afraid, and I can understand that," said Hamza, pointing to bullet holes still visible in the walls of the church, left by Israeli soldiers during a 39-day siege in 2002. "In Palestine, nowhere is spared from bullets. Not even the church where Jesus was born."The church's entrance, intentionally built low and narrow centuries ago to prevent intruders from marching into the church on their horses, seemed like a metaphor for the city's isolation. Where tourists once waited patiently to bend their heads and pass-through this humble opening, I walked through alone, my footsteps echoing in the emptiness. Inside the church, the grotto marking Jesus's birthplace, typically surrounded by crowds of worshippers, stood quiet and unattended.Under the wooden roof of the basilica, unlit candles lined the table, waiting for prayers that wouldn't come. Hamza told me that, for a second year in a row, there would be no lavish Christmas celebrations due to the lack of tourists and the intense atmosphere caused by the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza, just 70 kilometers away. "I used to love Christmas here," Hamza said. "The church would be packed, the square full of joy. But this year, I doubt we'll see any of that. All we can do is pray -- for the conflict to end and for Bethlehem to return to normal."

Tourism, once the city's economic lifeblood, has evaporated completely. Walking through Bethlehem's ancient streets, I witnessed firsthand the economic devastation. Hotels stood vacant, and many restaurants were closed. Shopkeepers sat waiting in doorways, hopeful yet resigned to the absence of visitors. I stopped to speak with an elderly juice vendor. His cart was pristine but lacked customers. "Tourists are gone, and so is our income," he told me, his words carrying a weary acceptance that seemed to echo throughout the city. As the afternoon light waned, I approached the stretch of the West Bank barrier dividing Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Its towering concrete wall casts a sharp shadow over the city's structures.In the time of Christ, the journey from Bethlehem to Jerusalem took mere hours on foot. Today, Palestinians face a complex maze of security checkpoints, making the 10-kilometer journey an unpredictable ordeal. Israel states that the wall is necessary for the protection of its citizens from terrorists. Palestinians, however, argue that the wall was constructed within Palestinian territory, serving as a means for Israel to seize more land. I stood at the foot of the wall, feeling insignificant under its weight. Steel wires jutted out like thorns at the top, while watchtowers monitored everything sternly. But the Palestinians had answered its gray dominion with color and wit, turning this monolith into an unlikely gallery. The wall now bears vibrant murals and street art, featuring works by both Palestinian and international artists.Near the wall, I met Elias, a student at Bethlehem University. His favorite mural depicts a dove wearing a bulletproof vest and clutching an olive branch. "It feels like us -- trapped, unable to soar," he explained. While visitors like myself could easily come and go, for Elias and his neighbors, even the simplest journey meant navigating a maze of checkpoints, their time consumed by questions, paperwork, and waiting. "It's not that I don't love my country," Elias confided, "but we also need to fly away to see the bigger world." I wished him luck, knowing how inadequate those words felt under such constraints.As I prepared to leave Bethlehem, my phone buzzed with a news alert: four Palestinians had been killed in an Israeli raid in a refugee camp in Tulkarm, another West Bank city roughly 60 kilometers away. These raids had grown more frequent and violent since October 2023, in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 800 Palestinians have been killed during raids in the West Bank since last October. Crossing back through the checkpoint, I glanced one last time at the wall that divides two worlds once intimately connected. Its immense concrete slabs stood unmoved, seemingly destined to outlast generations of both pilgrims and protesters. Yet, I find some solace in the knowledge that beyond the wall lies a city that has endured for over three millennia, where people of differing beliefs coexist in harmony. Perhaps one day, the spirit of connection will once again transcend even the most enduring of divides in this ancient city.