BETHLEHEM—Christmas was celebrated quietly here in a climate of fear and under the shadow of violence. Politics does not leave the pilgrim untouched.

Bethlehem, a Palestinian town on the West Bank only seven miles from Jerusalem, has had a brutal 2002.

The Basilica of the Nativity itself was occupied by Palestinian gunmen for 40 days in the spring. The town was reoccupied by Israeli forces in November and has been under curfew for 24 hours a day, meaning its residents live under virtual house arrest, being allowed to leave their homes only every four days for a few hours to buy food and supplies. Economic and educational life has grounded to a halt.

The Israeli policy is in response to repeated suicide bombings. The policy seemed to have limited success, as there were no more bombings after late November, and the Israeli armed forces lifted the curfew from Dec. 23-26 and withdrew their tanks from Manger Square. Yet twin bombings on Jan. 5, which killed 23 in Tel Aviv, have only added to a general sense of hopelessness.

“There is no light at the end of the tunnel,” one local employer said. “There is no tunnel.”

The heavy political situation hung over Christmas celebrations like the dark clouds and cold rain that poured down on Christmas night.

“God is crying for Bethlehem,” said a uniformed usher who led the procession to the Grotto of the Nativity.

At midnight Mass a front-row seat was reserved for Yassir Arafat. He usually attends but this year Israel would not give him permission. The local Catholics—almost all are Palestinian—draped a trademark kaffiyeh across an empty chair with a sign indicating that the missing guest was the “President of the State of Palestine.”

This year the Bethlehem civic administration banned Christmas decorations as a protest against the Israeli occupation of the city. The Israelis said the Palestinian Authority was exploiting Christmas for political purposes.

For their part, in deference to world Christian opinion, the Israeli forces took a low profile in the newly opened city during Christmas itself. Palestinian Muslims noted that Palestinian Christians were getting favorable treatment from the hated occupying power. The Christians, not wanting to seem less enthusiastic than their Muslim brothers for the Palestinian cause, gave Arafat pride of place.

In the midst of all this, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, celebrated midnight Mass and carried the statue of the Baby Jesus down to the Holy Grotto, the priests chanting prayers that can be prayed nowhere else: Hic involutus pannis … Here he was wrapped in swaddling cloths; Hic in praesepio est reclinatus … Here he was laid in the manger; Hic visus a pastoribus… Here he was seen by the shepherds.

According to the long-standing agreements that govern the Holy Places, whoever is the civil power must guarantee the patriarch's entry into Bethlehem from his residence in Jerusalem. The solemn entry is usually a festive affair, with marching bands and decorated streets. This year it was more somber.

The patriarch left Jerusalem escorted by a mounted color guard of the Israeli police force. Sabbah is the first native Palestinian patriarch, so it was an incongruous sight to see him being conducted to Christmas liturgies under the Israeli flag. At the checkpoint he was handed over to a mounted Palestinian flag-bearer. Given the Israeli destruction of the Palestinian Authority police buildings and forces in Bethlehem, there were no uniformed Palestinian police or police cars on hand. As a result, the patriarch's procession instead featured ambulances, sirens wailing.

He was greeted in Manger Square by an anti-Israeli demonstration comprised of local Palestinians, foreign pilgrims and Israeli peace activists. Sabbah steadfastly opposes the occupation, but with television cameras on hand, even his religious procession was disrupted with political slogans.

To understand how everything here is overladen with political meanings, witness the carol singers in the nearby Bethlehem Peace Center, which doubles as a sort of Palestinian tourist office. They were singing “The First NoÎl,” but the words “King of Israel” had been dropped. Was this another anti-Israeli move, echoes of what Arafat sometimes calls “the Palestinian Jesus”? Or to the contrary, were the European singers politically correct Christians not wishing to suggest that Jesus was King of the Jews, too?

Another incongruity at the Evangelical Lutheran Church on the main street: Instructions were given that Palestinians would light their candles first, others afterward. The intended symbolism was that the “light came first to Palestine.” No mention was made about Jesus being Jewish.

A reminder that Bethlehem is now a Muslim town came just as the Lutherans were starting up, as the ear-splitting broadcast of the muezzin (crier) called the Islamic faithful to prayer. Manger Square features a mosque with a loudspeaker pointed directly at the Basilica of the Nativity.

At midnight the imams were silent and Sabbah devoted about half his homily to the mystery of the Word made flesh, and the other half to the occupation and need for peace. It's a difficult balancing act to be the Catholic bishop here.

Here, as in hic. Here the light shines in the darkness. And that the darkness is in need of the light is all too evident.

Father Raymond J. de Souza recently returned from Bethlehem to Rome.

Christians Leaving Bethlehem

BETHLEHEM—Bethlehem and its neighboring towns are home to 85% of the Christians of the West Bank. Christians are only 2% of the Palestinian population, yet Bethlehem has been very much a Christian town, with more than half of its 30,000 inhabitants Christian as recently as 20 years ago.

Fifty years ago this whole area was more than three-quarters Christian. Now, while the neighboring towns still hold a Christian majority, Christians in Bethlehem are less than 20% of the population. Some estimates put the figure at less than 5%.

Two factors are pushing Christians out—the severity of Israeli anti-terror measures and the increasingly Islamic character of the Palestinian intifada (uprising). An important third factor is pulling them away: their high levels of education and Western outlook.

The intention of the Israeli curfew is twofold. First, it aims to catch the terrorists themselves and second to weaken their networks of support by using a form of collective punishment. The effect is that Bethlehem is a very unpleasant place to live and the prospects for improvement are slim as it becomes increasingly sealed off.

Christians find themselves in a peculiar position. They are being punished for the suicide bombers among them, yet the suicide bombers are not Christians. While Bethlehem is plastered with signs eulogizing the “martyrs,” Christian theology does not recognize a suicide bomber as a martyr—quite the contrary. Local Christians say their lack of “martyrs” has not gone unnoticed by their Muslim neighbors. Christians have not given their blood to the suicide phase of the intifada.

One thousand Christian families have left Bethlehem since the current intifada began two years ago. Ninety Christian families in a neighboring town left almost overnight last spring when the Israeli tanks first rolled into Bethlehem. There are currently more Christians who were born in Bethlehem living in Santiago, Chile, than there are Christians in Bethlehem. Almost every Christian has a member of his extended family abroad preparing the way for the rest of the family to follow.

Christian pilgrims will always have their eyes turned toward Bethlehem. There is a real possibility though that when they come, there will no longer be any local Christians to meet.

—Father Raymond J. de Souza