BETHLEHEM, West Bank – The Church of the Nativity has been closed and most souvenir shops closed. Hotels that used to be sold out months in advance were deserted.
Among the few signs of life on the main street in the Old City of Belém, last Friday, were the chirping of some birds and stray cats searching a overflowing trash can.
At the beginning of the month, only a few people attended the tree lighting ceremony at Praça da Manjedoura, an event that usually heralds the metamorphosis of the tranquil city of Belém in the West Bank into one of the main seasonal attractions of international Christianity.
The coronavirus pandemic drowned out Christmas in the place where it is said that it all started.
“Great sadness,” Father Ibrahim Shomali, chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said of this year’s celebrations. “We are very frustrated, but what can we do? We need to accept reality and do the right thing. “
Midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity is generally one of the social events of the year in the occupied West Bank. The old limestone church takes on the atmosphere of a brilliant film premiere when Palestinian diplomats and officials emerge from the shores of shiny BMWs and Mercedes in tailored suits and elegant dresses.
This year, the ceremony will be limited to Church officials, a handful of European diplomats and the mayor of Bethlehem. The Palestinian Authority imposed tough anti-virus restrictions in Bethlehem on December 10, establishing checkpoints throughout its perimeter, ordering the closing restaurants, cafes, schools and gyms, and banning almost all major meetings.
Belém has about 1,000 confirmed active cases of Covid-19, according to official data, although the true number is considered much higher. All hospital intensive care beds are occupied, the Ministry of Health said.
During a recent visit, the 222-room Bethlehem Hotel’s spacious lobby was quiet. The leather sofas and chairs were empty, the lights and heating off, and a thin layer of dust was accumulating on the coffee tables.
“There is usually nowhere to sit during this time of year,” said Elias al-Arja, the hotel’s owner, wearing a winter coat and a big black mask. “It usually gets so crowded that there is little room to move.”
Since March, when authorities discovered the first cases of the virus in the Belém area, said al-Arja, the hotel has struggled to pay its debts. He had to fire everyone except two of his 80 employees. To pay off debts, he said, he sold his second home in Ramallah and land in Jericho.
“It has been devastating,” he said.
Even the pandemic, the West Bank tourism industry, which relies heavily on Christmas-time business in Belém, predicted its best year in two decades. The West Bank received more than three million visitors last year, tourism officials said.
And despite competition from Israeli tourism providers and the challenges of doing business under occupation, Palestinian travel and tourism companies were hiring, offering new itineraries and predicting continued growth for 2020.
“We went from our highest to our lowest point,” said Tony Khashram, head of the Holy Land Entrance Tour Operators Association. “Everything fell apart in a snap.”
Tens of thousands of people in the tourism industry – including tour guides, tour operators, souvenir shop owners and restaurant and hotel staff – have lost their jobs, estimates the Ministry of Tourism. Tour operators are struggling to pay debts and receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments due from partners abroad.
Retailers were also devastated. The few shopkeepers who opened their stores said that the absence of tourists this year increased their feelings of exasperation at the economic consequences of the pandemic.
“The whole world came over Christmas last year,” said Sami Khamis, whose tea shop near Praça da Manjedoura offers a special tea with whole pieces of fresh sage, ginger, mint, rosemary and cinnamon. “But now I’m barely making enough money to put food on the table. This is a disastrous situation. “
The seven or eight souvenir shops nearby – which usually do a vigorous trade in kaffiyehs, dolls of the baby Jesus in straw beds and olive crosses inlaid with a jar of earth from the Mount of Olives – have all been closed.
In his office overlooking the Church of the Nativity, Mayor Anton Salman said he was sad that Bethlehem did not celebrate Christmas as it normally does, but emphasized that public health is fundamental. He contracted the virus last month.
“We have been through difficult circumstances during Christmas in the past,” he said, referring to previous violent conflicts with Israel. “But the pandemic is something quite different – there are so many unknowns.”
He said that the city would not abandon its traditions, only reduce them.
The Christmas Market at Praça da Manjedoura, he said, was held on a single day on Sunday instead of the usual two. The audience for the annual scout parade, in which dozens of boys and girls march through Bethlehem on Christmas Eve playing Palestinian hymns and Christmas carols, will be limited to local residents.
“We don’t feel like Christmas is happening,” said Lorette Zoughbi, 66, who watched the tree light up on television, even though it was just down the street from her apartment. “There is no special atmosphere. These days look like any other days that come and go. “
Bethlehem Christians, mostly Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, were once the majority. But the Christian population has declined with emigration, while the Muslim population has grown. Now Bethlehem, like all Palestinian cities in the West Bank, is predominantly Muslim.
Mrs. Zoughbi, a member of a prominent Christian family in Bethlehem, felt so devoid of the Christmas spirit that she and her husband didn’t even bother to take their full-sized tree out of storage. Instead, they stuck a small metal in the corner of the apartment.
For many Palestinian Christians, the worst part of Christmas is canceling family meetings.
Mrs. Zoughbi’s clan usually meets for a dinner of qidreh, a plate of rice and lamb, in a large restaurant with 150 of their relatives, usually followed by an evening of drums and chants of Arabic Christmas carols.
“These are some of the only times we have met,” she said.
Nihaya Musleh, a resident of Beit Sahour, immediately east of Belém, said she planned to host Harumiya, a local tradition in which men – or, as in her case, the family matriarch – invite their married daughters and sisters to a home special meal 40 days before Christmas.
Musleh said she and her son had invited 28 family members to lunch at their home, promising to impose social distance.
But after spending two days cooking, said Musleh, her daughter-in-law tested positive for the virus, so she gave up.
“I would be lying if I said that I am not unhappy about losing Harumiya,” she said. “But I’m glad we found out about the positive test the day before – it was a gift from God.”