Bethlehem Cancels Public Christmas Celebrations Amid Ongoing Gaza War

In better times the West Bank city of Bethlehem, where Christ was born, is festive and bustling with locals and international tourists and religious pilgrims at this time of year.

But the Palestinian city will spend its second straight year of the Gaza War with much more low key celebrations only done inside churches and not the typical huge festive Christmas parades through the main square. Absent is also the main large lit-up Christmas tree which usually dominates the town during the holiday season.

The Bethlehem Municipality has announced that the public celebrations that people often flock there for are cancelled and that events will instead be limited to religious rituals.

“For the second straight year, Bethlehem’s Christmas celebrations will be somber and muted, in deference to ongoing war in Gaza,” Time Magazine reports.

“There will be no giant Christmas tree in Manger Square, no raucous scout marching bands, no public lights twinkling and very few public decorations or displays.”

“Last year before Christmas, we had more hope, but now again we are close to Christmas and we don’t have anything,” the owner of the Nativity Store, Rony Tabash, told Time.

The isolated Biblical town, which lies behind Israel’s large wall which separates the West Bank, has long relied on religious pilgrimage and tourism for its economic survival.

A Time correspondent further details:

The city hosts more than 100 stores and 450 workshops dealing with traditional Palestinian handicraft, Qumsiyeh said. But just a week before Christmas, when the city should be bursting with visitors, Manger Square was mostly empty save for a few locals selling coffee and tea. Only two of the eight stores in the main drag of the square were open for business.

In the early half 20th century it was an almost completely Palestinian Christian town, predominantly Eastern Orthodox, but now this population has dwindled to merely a sizeable minority.

The growth of the Muslim population and the fact that Bethlehem is almost entirely surrounded by Jewish Israeli settlements has contributed to a steady exodus of the Arabic-speaking Christian population in search of better economic opportunity.

West Bank | A silent Christmas march is taking place in Bethlehem mourning the 20,000+ lives lost in the Israeli aggression on Gaza pic.twitter.com/s4XToueL0C

— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) December 24, 2023

In Gaza, despite new recent headlines of revived talks, a ceasefire in reality seems nowhere in sight. The war had long ago spilled over into the West Bank too, marked by Palestinian street clashes with Israeli police and military.

The about 15-month war has resulted in hundreds killed throughout the West Bank territories. Bethlehem, however, has been largely quiet but faces continued economic strangulation.