Mideast misery dashes holiday

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — There is no Christmas tree in Aida Ghaneim’s Bethlehem home this year. No festive lights hang from the ceiling, and the 48-year-old mother of four has no plans to cook her usual feast.

It is not that Ghaneim is abandoning Christmas. On the contrary, she said, "It abandoned us."

A shriveling economy, continuing Israeli restrictions and other hardships caused by three years of Mideast violence have left Christians living in the traditional birthplace of Jesus with little desire to celebrate.

Few of Bethlehem’s usual decorations are in place: A Santa outside one shop, a few lights outside another. Many of the red, green and blue lights strung over the streets around Manger Square are burned out.

The Palestinian Authority, saying it lacks the money, refused the town its usual $100,000 decoration budget, forcing local officials to scrounge up $10,000 on their own.

"The whole atmosphere of Christmas is gone," said Jane Bandak, 18, whose family’s traditional 30-person Christmas meal will shrink to half a dozen guests this year.

Some Christians have decided to ignore the holiday that was once the high point of their year. Others have fled abroad, splitting up their families. About 2,000 of the town’s 28,000 Christians have left during the recent violence, local officials say. They now make up only 35 percent of a town they once dominated.

Checkpoints, curfews and closures, enforced by Israel to stop Palestinian suicide bombings that have killed more than 400 Israelis over the past three years, make it hard for families spread across the West Bank to get together.

Israel says it plans to ease travel restrictions for Palestinian Christians over the holiday, but many Palestinians are skeptical. They say they do not want to spend their holiday waiting at roadblocks.

The Rev. Mitri Raheb, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, complained that while Christians around the world prepare to sing Christmas carols harking to this town, few appear concerned with the plight of the place where Jesus was born.

"The majority of Christians really don’t know what is going on in the little town of Bethlehem," he said.