c. 2004 Religion News Service

BETHLEHEM, West Bank _ Leading the way into the Bethlehem Peace Center, Hatem Abu Tarboush, a wiry, 30-year-old tourism agent, remarks: “They’re talking about peace. But I don’t think there’s any peace to talk about.”

The center, housed in the old British headquarters on Manger Square, is outfitted with brochures in different languages and a bored young receptionist.

The hall is bright and organized.

The floors and windows are clean.

There is only one thing wrong: There are no visitors.

As Christmas nears in this city of 40,000 known as the traditional birthplace of Jesus, it is hard to find signs of holiday spirit. On the square, the city’s famous Christmas tree is unadorned, as it has been since 2002. Tourist shops that line Milk Grotto Street, which runs alongside the Church of the Nativity, have not bothered to open for the holiday season.

Once a prosperous town that buzzed with the brisk trade and enthusiasm of religious tourism, four years of the latest intifada have rendered Bethlehem a tourist wasteland.

“Like a desert,” Tarboush said.

Before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against Israel in October 2000, some 20,000 tourists visited Bethlehem every month. Today, with numbers improving slightly after more than a year of relative calm, the mayor said the city sees about 7,000.

“That’s not every month,” warns Nasser Alawi, a broad-shouldered 32-year-old shopkeeper and guide at the church. Tourist visits, he said, are few and far between. “That 7,000 is supposed to be daily, not monthly.”

Minimal holiday preparations this year also are due to the fact that part of Christmas week falls during the official 40-day mourning period for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died Nov. 11.

In the Orient Palace Hotel, which is built alongside the church, there are no guests. Receptionist Imad Musleh said the few visitors they see come for lunch but don’t spend the night.

As Musleh explains this, two young men come in and ask for work. Musleh shakes his head glumly and the two, having barely crossed the threshold, turn and walk out.

“There is no work,” said the Rev. Amjad Sabbara, of the Latin parish at the Church of the Nativity. “People are suffering a great deal.”

At the church entrance, eager tourism officials in uniforms record the trickle of visitors and their nationalities on a note board. The list is painfully short.

Teresa Linton, a 20-year-old student from Columbus, Ohio, with sandy blond hair and a camera slung over her shoulder, seems in awe of the church’s religious significance.

She said her trip was a “spur of the moment” decision. Her friend, Amjad Rabee, 24, was born in Ramallah and invited her to see the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Rabee, who hadn’t been home in three years, said he is shocked by the change brought by the intifada _ but not as unnerved as Linton.

“There are so many checkpoints, machine guns, that kind of thing,” she said. “It’s surprising to see all that I’ve seen. … You don’t see stuff like this in America.”

Just five years ago, Bethlehem was a very different place as it prepared for the March 2000 visit by Pope John Paul II. “I have never witnessed such a joyful Christmas,” said the city’s longtime mayor, Hana Nasser.

Within a few years, though, the city and its mood had changed dramatically.

Following a string of suicide bombings in neighboring Jerusalem, Israeli forces reoccupied the city in 2002, sparking a tense five-week siege of militants holed up in the Church of the Nativity.

“Since then,” Nasser said, “we have not had a merry Christmas.”

Seated in his office on Manger Square, Nasser said he hopes the economy will improve, but remains gloomy. “What we have now is a big zero,” he said. “We have occupation, damages, humiliation. Our situation is catastrophic. Nothing will raise the spirits of the people.”

Outside the crowded city center, houses lay demolished as a vivid reminder of past military operations. Unemployment here is 65 percent, per capita income is less than $400 and the tourism gains in Israel during the past year have yet to be felt along the city’s narrow, winding streets.

The few tourist groups that do visit have little impact because “they are herded off the buses into the church and then leave immediately,” said the Rev. Andrew White, the canon of Coventry in Britain, whose diocese has a formal link with the Syrian-Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

Over the years, Palestinian authorities have tried to wean Bethlehemites off nonreligious Christmas celebrations, deeming it unseemly to appear even briefly joyous amid so much destitution. But these efforts haven’t sat well with everyone in the religious community.

“They tried to cancel Christmas,” said White, who is also the director of the International Center for Reconciliation and was involved in negotiations during the 2002 church siege. “People told children that Papa Noel couldn’t visit Bethlehem because of the security closures. That is desperately sad.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)

The annual procession of the patriarch of Jerusalem will go forward as usual this year. The public observance of this ritual, however, will pale in comparison to Christmases past.

Midnight Mass on Manger Square once played to crowds of tens of thousands, with diplomats and high-profile figures, not to mention Arafat, usually in attendance. A video screen would be set up on the square to broadcast the event amid a jubilant carnival atmosphere with street performers, food stalls and artists set up long in advance.

“All of this was lit up with colored lights and decorations,” said Mohamed Awadullah, 46, sweeping his hand across the empty courtyard of the church and toward the square.

Awadullah, who worked with the Ministry of Tourism as an inspector and was a member of the team that organized Christmas celebrations, said that inside the church, everything _ from the religious ceremonies to the red, green and silver ornaments hanging delicately from candle lanterns in the church’s nave _ remains the same.

“But outside is where you feel it,” he said. “We don’t have the activity. If you are happy at home, you celebrate. But now, the majority of people don’t have an income. They don’t want to spend.”

White called it “a rather frustrating” time.

“Everyone is singing `O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and everyone forgets about the real Bethlehem,” White said. “Bethlehem is dead.”

PH/RB END ABDOU

(Nyier Abdou wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and can be reached at news(at)newhouse.com.)