Christmas In Bethlehem

  • Thread starter Thread starter mom_07
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Changed thread title to reflect news article.

Please review the Forum Guidelines before posting.
 
Thank you. My bad. I will be more attentive to detail in the future.

👍
 
Thank you Mike. It is hard to reconcile those who say the conditions in Bethlehem are actually improving with other reports like this. For instance the article I posted linked these “statistics”

Tourism up 100 percent from last year.

Increases in Bethlehem’s main industries as well: Textiles 50%, Stone and marble export 40%, commercial transportation 20%, and claims these increases have brought millions of dollars into the local economy.

By their account Bethlehem is a thriving city.
 
mom 07:
Does anyone here have an honest evaluation of the state of Bethlehem?
Click to expand...
Well I would trust a Catholic Missionary asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5038

Participation in the mass in Bethlehem was very warm and so beautiful. People were all united and taking part, every detail of the liturgy was seen to. The great witness of the Franciscan fathers can be taken in here: all the Franciscan sites are looked after, perfect, in order and clean… one cannot say the same about other holy sites tended to by other Christian communities.

Another beautiful experience was a visit to the children’s hospital in Bethlehem. We found children aged between two and five weeks who had been abandoned because their parents had fled or been killed in the war. The sisters take care of all of them with great love.

But going to Bethlehem is also a journey into suffering. The wounds of the Israeli-Palestinian problem are starkly visible on arrival: the wall which surrounds and suffocates the city is indescribably sad. Bethlehem is a sort of prison: only a handful of people are in sight, people asking for handouts, begging because they are hungry… Everything speaks of neglect and of misery: half-finished buildings, rubbish on the sides of the streets, insecurity, tension, anxiety among the people.

Because of the wall, few pilgrims stay overnight in Bethlehem: there are too many difficulties on the journey and too many fears. All Christians should help the people living in Bethlehem, otherwise they will leave and this holy place will lose its Christian community.

And an Apostolic Nuncio asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=4949

Bethlehem for the people of Bethlehem:

From a human point of view, being surrounded by an eight-metre (27-ft) wall and the great hardship it imposes are certainly no way to celebrate Christmas for it literally closes off one’s horizons.

However even here, when we kneel before God made man we must pull down the wall of selfishness and open up to others. We must bring down the wall that hides our sins and invoke mercy. We must tear down the wall of our sadness to appeal to the path of joy which is walking with Christ along the steps of our life.
 
And the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster rcdow.org.uk/cardinal/default.asp?library_ref=1&content_ref=567

Today in the town of David a saviour has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord. Many years ago I was fortunate to offer Mass in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, going down to the cave where Jesus was born to kiss that spot where God became one with man, binding himself to our humanity in an irrevocable covenant of love.

What has happened to that town since? How sad it is that Christians in Bethlehem feel compelled to leave the land of their birth for foreign lands, on account of the political situation in the Holy Land. How tragic that as a result of all the violence perpetrated there the little town of Christ’s birth is corralled, blocked in by a wall and checkpoints. Borders have been re-drawn: families have been separated and ancient landmarks have been lost to the town. Commerce and tourism have been decimated; unemployment has led to an exodus of citizens, most of them Christians.

St. Jerome calls Bethlehem “the most sacred spot in the world for us, indeed for the whole world”. Yet Bethlehem, the icon of all pilgrim sites, sees only one in ten of the pilgrims who five years ago came to pay homage to the Christ Child. How tragic that Christians, who for centuries have lived in harmony with their neighbours and who have stood resolutely for peace, are being forced out by present circumstances.

The people of Bethlehem are tonight celebrating the Nativity with joy. But they feel terribly alone. Recently Pope Benedict accepted, on behalf of the Catholic Church, a symbolic Bethlehem passport. He wanted to show that we are all citizens of Bethlehem, and that Bethlehem should be a free and open city. I hope that we can play our part in ensuring that it stay that way: that those of you who have not visited Bethlehem and are able to will take time this year to do so: to stay there, and to show the people of that town that they are not alone. In the meantime, please pray for Bethlehem, that their town not become a museum, that they again have hope, that the eyes and the hearts of the world be opened to what is happening there.

The Christ Child is crying for the town of his birth.
With him, I want tonight to issue a plea. Violence is not the answer. Terror and repression are not the way of the Christ Child. To those with power, I want to say: seek peace with justice. The Holy Land conflict has inflicted a terrible wound on humanity. Bind that wound. Build bridges, not walls. Let Bethlehem be what it is meant to be: a free and open city.
 
mom 07:
Tourism up 100 percent from last year.

Increases in Bethlehem’s main industries as well: Textiles 50%, Stone and marble export 40%, commercial transportation 20%, and claims these increases have brought millions of dollars into the local economy.
Click to expand...
An increase from 10 to 20 pilgrims is 100% increase. The truth is that tourism was more or less totally stopped altogether at the height of the intifada. The economy of Bethlehem may be less bad than it was a couple of years ago. Neither is it as good as it was 5 years ago. I recently received an e-mail from Bethlehem, from the Holy Land Trust which included this-
One hundred residents from the Bethlehem district gathered in Beit Jala yesterday, January 1, at noon to protest against the illegal annexation wall being built on their land. The building of the wall in the city of Beit Jala began last week for so-called security purposes, yet its route lies deep within Palestinian territories. Residents of Beit Jala refuse to accept the land appropriation and isolation that the illegal Wall creates, and that the state of Israel insists on building despite growing international criticism. Former Director of Holy Land Trust and candidate for elections Sami Awad was detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers, and stated “the Israeli occupation is sending a clear message to the Palestinian people, they don’t want us to engage in nonviolent resistance because it truly exposes them and the injustice they are doing to the world.”
Click to expand...
The wall will completely separate Beit Sahour, Beit Jala and Bethlehem from the northern parts of the West Bank.Because of Bethlehem’s significance to and historic ties with Palestinian East Jerusalem, Bethlehem’s demise may well mark the beginning of the end of the Two-State solution. For without East Jerusalem there can be no viable Palestinian state, and hence no viable peace. The order was issued for the confiscation of 200 dunums of Palestinian land on the northwest side of Beit Jala. If the Wall is completed in this area, 4000 dunums of the areas most fertile land will be isolated in order to accommodate for the expansion and the building of settlements of Gilo and Har Gilo. Of course, this will leave Beit Jala with no potential for expansion.
Click to expand...
The growing ghettoization of Bethlehem is not only destroying ancient communities, but is also directly impeding prospects for Middle East peace. The tenders issued support an influx of nearly 900 new settlers, a settler population increase of over three per cent in Etzion. These orders follow a pattern of accelerated settlement activity this year, which Israel has begun its plans to make room for over 30,000 new settlers throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This activity violates the Road Map, which prohibits settlement expansion. The Wall and all of Israel’s settlement colonies are illegal under international law, as unanimously reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice on July 9th, 2004.
Click to expand...
 
Also boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/12/26/thousands_flock_to_bethlehem/

The estimated 30,000 pilgrims and tourists who came to Bethlehem this Christmas weekend was the highest number since 2000, reflecting an increase in tourism during a period of relative quiet this year.

The reality, Palestinians said during the celebrations, is that the new barrier is far less of an obstacle for foreign tourists, whose cash Bethlehem desperately needs, than it is for Palestinians who undergo closer security scrutiny and need Israeli permits to travel between Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Israel for work, study, or worship.

''There are more foreigners than last year, but there are far fewer Palestinian citizens," Mohammed al-Akram, a security official for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, said while standing guard in the foyer of the Church of the Nativity. ''All the checkpoints and the wall make it hard for them to get here."

Pilgrims crossing from Jerusalem to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations this year passed through a terminal that opened this month after Israel completed a section of the new security barrier, which it says is designed to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel.

The Israelis describe the Bethlehem terminal, organized like a border crossing, as an effort to speed the time it takes Palestinians and visitors to cross from the West Bank to Israel. Palestinian officials say it tightens Israeli control over movement in and out of the city and entrenches the new barrier as a de facto border.
 
Thank you Matt25. I was skeptical that Bethlehem had become a golden land of opportunity. Thank you for the links.
 
And zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=9410

Many Bethlehem residents have not been out of the Bethlehem-Beit Sahour-Beit Jala triangle for more than five years. Arab East Jerusalem, only a 10-minute drive away, remains out of reach. Israeli settlements are growing, in direct violation of international law and even of Israel’s own commitments to the U.S.-sponsored “Road Map” that requires a complete freeze in settlement activity.

The Wall is growing larger and higher, grabbing more and more land on the Israeli side. It locks all of the West Bank’s major aquifers onto the Israeli side, denying Palestinians access to their water sources. Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni recently admitted the route of the Wall will be “significant” in shaping Israel’s future borders. The Associated Press reports that it will “incorporate the major Jewish settlements and is seen as a de facto border.”

The Wall divides the contiguous, water-rich Israeli territory of the West Bank, from the disconnected, parched Palestinian cantons that lie within it. These small Palestinian areas are separated by a matrix of settlements and Israeli-controlled roads and highways. It is almost inevitable Israel and the U.S. will soon anoint those truncated, non-contiguous bantustans as a Palestinian “state,” however far they may be from a viable two-state solution.

Already the Israeli military checkpoint that blocks the road into Bethlehem has been transformed from a ramshackle set of sheds and barbed wire fences connected by muddy paths into a huge new automated complex abutting the Wall. Known as “the terminal,” it features electronically-controlled floor-to-ceiling turnstiles and machine-gun-toting Israeli soldiers on prison-style catwalks above the heads of would-be tourists. In the words of one Jerusalem taxi driver stalled at the Bethlehem roadblock, “this isn’t a checkpoint, it’s an international border.”

There is an international campaign, known as “Open Bethlehem,” trying to revive the city’s collapsing tourism industry. Go to openbethlehem.org/ for full information
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top