After 2 years, Christmas returns to Bethlehem

About 80% of the residents depend on tourists and pilgrims for their livelihoods.

- By MEGAN JANETSKY

MAHMOUD ILLEAN Associated Press PALESTINIANS in Bethlehem light a Christmas tree on Saturday in Manger Square. The festivities had been put on hold for two years by the war in Gaza.

For the last two Christmases, John Juka’s family restaurant looked about the same as any business in Bethlehem: closed and eerily empty.

But on Saturday evening, it bustled with families and was illuminated by strings of red lights, a hopeful change in the Palestinian city that’s been reeling since war broke out in Gaza.

Christmas celebrations are slowly returning to the traditional birthplace of Jesus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town.

While a shaky ceasefire holds in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians hope the festivities are a step toward a more peaceful future in a region shaken by tragedy.

“It’s not like it was before the war,” 30-year-old Juka said. “But it’s like life is coming back again.”

Muslim-majority city hosts pilgrims

Tourism and religious pilgrims have long been a prime economic engine for Bethlehem. Around 80% of the Muslim-majority city’s residents live off it, according to the local government.

Those earnings spread out to communities across the West Bank, a territory long marked by economic precarity.

“When we have 10,000 visitors and pilgrims sleeping in Bethlehem, that means the butcher is working, the supermarket is working and everybody is working,” said Bethlehem Mayor Maher Nicola Canawati. “There's a ripple effect.”