By LAURA KING
Associated Press Writer
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP)--No twinkling strings of colored lights.
No pilgrims packing Manger Square. This Christmas is shaping up
to be a forlorn affair in Bethlehem, the town of Christ's birth.
A week before
Christmas, this biblical West Bank town in the hills just south
of Jerusalem--celebrated in familiar holiday carols, commemorated
in countless Christmas cards and school-pageant creches--has become
an emblem of the hardships and sorrows of the nearly 3-month-old
Palestinian uprising.
Fierce gun
battles rage between Palestinian snipers and Israeli machine gunners
in the suburb of Beit Jalla. Bethlehem's three refugee camps boil
with fury and discontent. Dozens of Palestinian stone-throwers,
some as young as 8 or 9, have been hurt or killed in cat-and-mouse
battles with Israeli troops guarding a fortified Jewish shrine
on the edge of Bethlehem.
Not surprisingly,
tourism--mainly organized through Israeli tour companies--has
dried up. Most souvenir shops are tightly shuttered, and the lumbering
tour buses that would normally clog the narrow streets this time
of year are absent.
It is a bitter
blow for Palestinians who had hoped the millennial Christmas would
be the centerpiece of an ambitious economic-development plan for
Bethlehem--and a jump-start for their efforts to claim a larger
share of tourism dollars.
``The season
has been hard hit,'' acknowledged Nabil Qassis, the Palestinian
Cabinet minister in charge of Bethlehem 2000, the Palestinian
body overseeing the development effort. ``If you want to go somewhere,
you go to have fun, not to be shot at.''
On Monday,
Manger Square--the big stone plaza fronting the Church of the
Nativity, the traditional site of Christ's birth _ was all but
deserted. An old man in an Arab headdress hobbled slowly across
the nearly empty expanse, leaning on a cane. Inside the cavernous
church, the only visitors in sight were a lone Palestinian mother
and child.
``Usually,
there would be a wait of two or three hours to go down into the
grotto''--the lamplit, cavelike enclosure beneath the church,
where faithful believe Mary gave birth--``but now you can just
walk in,'' said a Palestinian tourist policeman who would only
give his family name, Shakarneh.
There was
only one place in town where a crowd could be found: the Israeli
military checkpoint on the edge of Bethlehem, manned by half a
dozen edgy-looking young soldiers who stopped cars and questioned
motorists while a long traffic jam backed up on either side.
For much of
the past three months, Palestinian travel in and out of the West
Bank, on whose edge Bethlehem lies, has been sharply restricted.
In recent days, Israel has again begun allowing Palestinians to
travel into Israel for their jobs, which are usually manual labor.
Last week,
Israeli media reports raised the possibility that Israel could
declare Bethlehem a closed military area on Christmas Eve, preventing
pilgrims and tourists from entering. The army said Monday that
no decision had yet been made.
Despite the
grim outlook, Christmas has not been canceled outright.
A few choirs,
nearly all of them local, will sing in Manger Square on Christmas
Eve. The Latin Patriarchate says it will stage its traditional
regalia-filled holiday procession--led by the patriarch, the top
Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land--from Jerusalem, three
miles away.
Yasser Arafat
usually attends midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity, along
with a host of other dignitaries, but his plans were unclear this
year. The Palestinian leader has spent nearly all of the current
outbreak of violence holed up at his headquarters in the Gaza
Strip.
Bethlehem
has seen some grim Christmases past. It was under Israeli military
occupation for nearly three decades, and times were particularly
tense during the Palestinians' 1987-92 intifada, or uprising,
when annual festivities in Manger Square were watched over by
Israeli army snipers on the rooftops.
But many had
hoped for a better life once Palestinians gained control of the
West Bank's cities and large towns, including Bethlehem. Celebrations
in 1995, the first year of Palestinian rule in Bethlehem, were
marked by an outpouring of nationalistic fervor and hopes for
Palestinian statehood.
Hope was in
short supply in Beit Jalla, a mainly Christian village abutting
Bethlehem that has seen some of uprising's worst firefights. Issa
Kissia, a 42-year-old Palestinian father of four, had his house
wrecked by shellfire and lost his job in Israel when he could
not travel to work.
``Every year
we have presents and a Christmas tree, but this year there is
no house for the tree, and no money for presents,'' Kissia said.
``I don't know what to tell my children.
``This year,
we do not feel that Christmas is coming.''
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