Celebrating a Christmas eve Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis, whose almost three-year-old papacy has been marked by calls for sobriety and compassion for the less fortunate, said Christmas was the time to “once more discover who we are”. The vast majority in the Christian community – including those living in the city of Jesus’ birth – is under no illusions of what the biggest threat to their existence really is: Israel’s relentless repression of Palestinian presence in the Holy Land, irrespective of their religion. She said she was glad she made the trip because “it was one of my dreams to come here”.
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Father Jamal Khader, a Palestinian priest, blames the Israeli occupation. “But God willing, we’ll overcome it and celebrate”.
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Recently the city had enjoyed a few years of relative calm and thousands of revelers and pilgrims poured into Manger Square each Christmas.
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For their part, Israeli officials say the Palestinian leadership has done nothing to stem the violence or dissuade the young from committing attacks.
Travelling from Jerusalem nearby, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Jordanian Fouad Twal, would have had to pass through the Israeli wall that separates the two cities, with Bethlehem located in the occupied West Bank. For years, the crippling reality of the occupation has pushed many Christians to leave Palestine to seek better opportunities elsewhere, with some leaving out of concern that political or violent Islamist groups could grow and threaten their rights as a religious minority.
Mirvat al-Azzeh wasn’t quite sure what to do when a Christian friend presented her with her first Christmas tree almost 18 years ago.
Khader said the Latin Patriarch’s annual procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on Christmas eve had gone ahead this year, as it had done during even through the Second Intifada.
The Palestinian tourism minister says Bethlehem “is the birthplace of the king of peace, so what we want is peace”.
Despite a gloomy Christmas, hope springs eternal in the little town where it all began for the Christian faith. Over the last century, Christians had gone from comprising 20 percent of the Palestinian population to just over 1 percent, he said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) attends midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on December 25, 2015.
“Despite the grief for the souls of the dead Palestinians, everybody here smiles at your face”, he said.
A wave of violence has led to a sharp decline in pilgrims visiting Bethlehem and the rest of the Holy Land this year, and only a sparse crowd was on hand to welcome Twal’s procession.
In his homily, Twal expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinians, Syrian refugees and “victims of all forms of terrorism everywhere”, according to a transcript issued by his office.
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Kyle Google came from Iowa in the United States to visit the holy land.
