Christmas is cancelled in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus

Christmas is officially cancelled in Bethlehem this year, with the birthplace of Jesus resembling a ghost town as fighting between Israel and Hamas rages.

Manger Square, usually thronging with tourists and ablaze with festive lights and decorations, was largely empty when The Telegraph visited.

At its centre is a nativity scene showing the baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, surrounded by rubble and barbed wire, in a chilling echo of the thousands of children killed in Gaza.

Nearby, a group of students unfurled a giant Palestinian flag in silence.

On Sunday, one of the city’s multiple scouts bands that typically march across Bethlehem celebrating Christmas with drums and trumpets, walked the cobbled streets in silence, holding posters in Arabic and English, some of them saying “Gaza is in the heart” and “Let the war stop now”.

Situated in the volatile West Bank, Bethlehem is no stranger to war and instability. But no one here can remember the last time both church leaders and local authorities agreed to cancel Christmas altogether.

Rev Dr Munther Isaac, the Pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran church, said this was the most challenging Christmas season he had experienced, conceding that he no longer felt able to preach a message of hope.

“We’ve lost all hope for peace,” said Rev Isaac, who hails from the nearby town of Beir Sahur, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.

A woman prays at the empty Church of Nativity in Bethlehem

“I can’t preach and promise my people empty words that things will get better,” he told The Telegraph, adding that he feared that the devastation in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have now died, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, could one day spread to the West Bank.

Rev Isaac and his congregation wanted to channel the pain and anger the local Christians feel about the plight of Gaza.

Their own nativity scene features Jesus as a baby, wrapped in the Palestinian keffiyeh, lying in a manger formed from rubble.

The message, Rev Isaac said, is that “he’s with those children who are bombed and rescued, hopefully, alive from under the rubble”.

The story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem has a special resonance with Palestinians this year.

“The Christmas story has become our story: A family that had to travel during the occupation because of a census by the emperor, that’s meant for registration and control… is very similar to the magnetic card system that we have here,” Rev Isaac said, referring to the biometric ID cards that Palestinians seeking to work in Israel must obtain.

He said his and other parishes’ calls to cancel the celebrations reflects the mood of their parishioners, some of whom aren’t even putting up Christmas trees in their homes this year.

Turning a blind eye

In his Saturday mass, Rev Isaac accused the world for turning a blind eye to a “genocide against a captive population”.

“We, the Palestinians, will recover… I feel sorry for those who are complicit. Will you ever recover from this?” he said.

Earlier this month, the pastor led a delegation of Bethlehem church leaders to Washington in what he now describes as a “naive” hope that, with Christmas approaching, American politicians would heed their call for peace.

“We said: ‘All we’re asking for is a ceasefire’,” the priest said.

Hanna Hanania, the mayor of Bethlehem, said his city could face unrest as the economic situation deteriorates

The American officials and politicians, he said, were very blunt, telling him “this war must continue”.

Since the trip, however, the US and Israel’s allies have ramped up pressure on Israel to minimise civilian casualties in Gaza.

Thanks to a US abstention, the United Nations Security Council managed to pass a motion to get more aid into the besieged enclave last week, but the body fell short of backing a call for a ceasefire.

That stance makes many Palestinians in the West Bank, which this year has suffered its worst unrest since the end of the Second Intifada, uneasy about their own future.

The Israel Defense Forces have conducted several raids in Bethlehem since the Oct 7 attacks, setting the city on edge, and the cancellation of Christmas festivities has struck a severe blow to the town’s economy.

Collapse of tourism

With many major airlines cancelling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting.

Tourism accounts for an estimated 70 per cent of Bethlehem’s income, almost all of which comes during the Christmas season, Hanna Hanania, the mayor of Bethlehem, told the Telegraph.

Earlier this month, Mr Hanania was forced to cancel the traditional Christmas tree lighting ceremony and other festivities on the main square outside his office.

“I’ve never seen anything else like it in my life,” said Mr Hanania, who was a teeanger during the Second Intifida, gesturing to shuttered hotels and empty restaurants. “The tourism sector has completely collapsed.”

Father Issa Thalijeh, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity: “This is the first time we see the church in December empty like this”

Local officials say more than 70 hotels in Bethlehem have been forced to close, leaving thousands of people unemployed, while blockade imposed by Israeli authorities since Oct 7 throughout the West Bank has also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from exiting the territory to work in Israel.

Mr Hanania admitted that his city and other parts of the West Bank could face unrest as the economic situation deteriorates.

Across the square from the mayor’s office at the Church of the Nativity, there were none of the usual crowds lining the ancient paving stones, queuing to catch a glimpse of the place of Jesus’s birth.

Instead, a few desperate taxi drivers were looking for anyone who looked remotely like a tourist.

“This is the first time we see the church in December empty like this,” said Father Issa Thalijeh, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity.

Inside the basilica, a newly-renovated mediaeval mosaic glistened in a shaft of sunlight.

“This church used to be full of people,” he said.

This year, instead of managing crowds of tourists, much of his time had been taken up helping parishioners left without work amid the West Bank lockdown, he told the Telegraph.

Like many in Bethlehem, the plight of Gaza’s Christians weighed heavily on Father Issa.

Gazan Christians, who numbered just over 1,100 people before the war, used to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas every year, having secured special permits from Israel that offered a rare chance to leave the Strip.

A solitary woman lights a candle at the empty Church of Nativity in Bethlehem

Father Issa described a visit from a young Gazan family this Easter, who came to Bethlehem with their daughter, Aliya, who had been born in February.

In October, Aliya was killed in an Israeli air strike. She was six months old.

“It’s not easy to hold someone in your arms, to think they have a good life ahead of them, only to find out they are dead now,” Father Issa told the Telegraph, flicking through photos on his phone showing him holding the baby in a pink winter suit.

Like other churches in the city, the Church of Nativity has scrapped all its Christmas celebrations.

One of the oldest Christian communities in the world, Bethlehem’s Greek Orthodox community now numbers about 3,500 people, Father Issa said, adding that it was twice as large when he was ordained 11 years earlier.

No mood to clebrate

Mona, a Bethlehem resident who came to the church with a friend, told the Telegraph she supported the idea of cancelling Christmas festivities, saying locals were in no mood to celebrate.

“This is the birthplace of Jesus: it should be the light of the world. It gets me down what’s happening around us,” said Mona, who declined to give her second name.

But however difficult the circumstances, Father Issa tries to keep his faith.

He refuses to give up hope, taking inspiration from the cave underneath the church where a silver 14-pointed star embedded in the polished marble slab marks the supposed place of Jesus’s birth.

“This light is shining on us. This light will come to us one day. If I don’t build my thoughts on peace and love, it will never come to us,” he said.

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