1000’s of individuals traveled from close by cities and villages to attend Bethlehem’s annual Christmas Eve tree lighting ceremony within the metropolis’s historic Manger Sq.. Traditionally an occasion crammed with pleasure and surprise, it was the primary such ceremony since the struggle in Gaza started in 2023. However hardly any vacationers had been in attendance.
For greater than two years, worldwide vacationers and Christian pilgrims have largely stayed away following Hamas’ lethal terrorist assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Because the struggle in Gaza raged, church leaders canceled Bethlehem’s public Christmas celebrations.
However this 12 months, for Bethlehem Mayor Maher Canawati, the Trump administration-brokered ceasefire was cause sufficient to attempt to carry the trustworthy again to the place the Christmas story started.
“Bethlehem, you already know, we live from vacationers, from tourism and from pilgrims who come to remain in our motels, to eat in our eating places, to purchase our souvenirs that we’re producing right here,” Canawati mentioned. “And there was a whole halt on tourism for the previous two years.”
Ilia Yefimovich /AFP by way of Getty Photos
Contained in the 4th-century Church of the Nativity, one of many world’s oldest and most sacred Christian websites, round 15,000 guests would arrive day-after-day in instances of peace. The absence of vacationers has devastated Bethlehem’s tourism business, and almost its total economic system, driving unemployment as much as 70%. Lodge vacancies have been at document highs.
Muhammad Abu Jurah’s household has run a memento store in Bethlehem for generations. However over the past two years, he is been compelled to put off all six of his workers members.
“We do not have quite a lot of vacationers as a result of, you already know, the struggle,” he mentioned. “So, this is the reason they’ve an enormous downside in Bethlehem with out vacationers.”
Matthew Qasis, who has labored as a tour information in Bethlehem all of his grownup life, says he is by no means seen the realm so quiet.
His message to Christians world wide: “Come again, as a result of Bethlehem belongs to everybody, and Bethlehem is a message of affection and peace. A message wanted now greater than ever, and a prayer of hope that the trustworthy return to the place the place it is believed Christmas started.”
ilia yefimovich /AFP by way of Getty Photos 
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Catholic Church’s high chief within the Holy Land and the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, commenced the vacation celebrations Wednesday throughout a conventional procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the Related Press reported. Pizzaballa known as for “a Christmas full of sunshine.”
“After two years of darkness, we want mild,” Pizzaballa mentioned to the group in Manger Sq., to whom the cardinal introduced greetings from the small Christian neighborhood in Gaza, the place he had held an early Christmas mass on Sunday, AP reported. “We, all collectively, we resolve to be the sunshine, and the sunshine of Bethlehem is the sunshine of the world.”
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