BEIT SAHOUR, West Bank — In 2000, the year Pope John Paul II visited the Holy Land, Wisam Salsaa, a local tour guide, had more bookings than he knew what to do with.

Then, in September 2000, the Palestinian intifada, (uprising), began and pilgrims stopped visiting Bethlehem and nearby Beit Sahour. It was here in this sleepy town that a group of shepherds joyously spread the news of Jesus' birth from what is now called Shepherds' Field.

“I used to guide groups around Palestine and Israel,” Salsaa, now 29 and an exporter of locally made olivewood Nativity scenes and crucifixes, said nostalgically.

“I stopped doing tours in November 2000 because tourists weren't coming and I wasn't able to take groups into Israel,” he said, referring to Israel's closure on the West Bank, which to this day prevents all but a few thousand Palestinians from entering Israel.

Like other residents of this predominantly Christian Palestinian town, Salsaa, a Roman Catholic, said the separation barrier Israel started building in the Bethlehem area more than a year ago “has made an already difficult situation much worse.”

“Psychologically, it's a horrible thing to feel there's a wall around you. I feel like I'm in jail,” said Salsaa, fashionably dressed in pressed jeans, a button-down shirt and sporty sunglasses. “Since the start of the uprising I've been to the United States five times and Europe at least 10 times, but I've only managed to make it to Ramallah twice.”

Ramallah, a large West Bank town and the seat of the Palestinian government, is just a few miles away from Beit Sahour.

“Do you want to know what's ironic?” Salsaa asked. “American tourists can travel freely between here and Jerusalem while we, who have lived here for hundreds of years, can't pray in the Church of the Holy Sepuchre [located in the Old City of Jerusalem]. Our family used to go there at Christmas and Easter. The holidays haven't felt the same since the closure.”

Salsaa has remained in Beit Sahour despite the departure of hundreds of friends and several family members during the past three and a half years, but he, too, is now thinking of moving abroad.

“Frankly, I don't see any future here for me or my family. If I could get a European visa to live and work abroad, I would leave tomorrow,” he said quietly.

Salsaa is far from alone. During the past decade, as the situation between Palestinians and Israelis has worsened along with the economy, thousands of Christian Palestinians have left the region. Now, due in part to Israel's separation barrier, many more are contemplating emigration.

Great Wall

Once completed, the barrier will completely separate Israel from the West Bank.

Palestinians say it is an attempt by Israel to maintain Jewish settlements by grabbing Palestinian land.

Israel says it is building the wall to prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel.

While until recently many Palestinians, including thousands of laborers and scores of terrorists, have been able to evade Israeli checkpoints and enter the country via back roads, the so-called wall or fence will make this nearly impossible.

That, at least, is what Israeli security officials are counting on.

Interviewed by phone as he was boarding a public bus in Jerusalem, David Baker, an official in the prime minister's office, said that “for Israelis, this fence is a matter of life and death. As we speak I see a security man checking for suspicious objects and suspicious people.”

Baker insisted the barrier has already saved countless lives.

“All the evidence points to a significantly marked decrease in the number of suicide attacks perpetrated against innocent Israelis as a result of the security fence,” he said.

Since the start of the Palestinian uprising three and a half years ago, “almost 1,000 Israelis, most of them civilians, have been killed in terrorist attacks,” Baker said. “Thousands more have been wounded.”

The Israeli official said his government is “fully cognizant of the difficulties” the barrier is creating and vowed it “will do its utmost to alleviate the situation by granting free access wherever possible.”

However, Baker made it clear that, in Israel's view, the Palestinians have only themselves to blame for the barrier.

“The true villains are the Palestinian terrorists who have necessitated the building of this fence,” Baker insisted.

Beit Sahour has lost 105 families to emigration since the start of the intifada, according to Fuad Kokaly, the town's mayor.

“All were Christian families,” Kokaly, an Orthodox Christian, noted. “People are leaving because there is no income, no life anymore. We are being choked by the siege.”

Father Raed Abusahlia, parish priest of the West Bank village of Taybeh, 15 miles north of Jerusalem, said the barrier has not yet reached his community.

But Father Abusahlia, who also heads the press office of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, said once it arrives, “we will be cut off.”

As it is, the priest said, “I know children here who have never visited Jerusalem or the [Church of the] Holy Sepulchre.”

Bethlehem, Father Abusahlia said, “is so far the most affected. Thirty families, many of them Christian, are now separated from the rest of Bethlehem. And because they don't have an Israeli ID card, they can't enter Jerusalem. If they want to go to work or to pray, they have to drive some kilometers, go through a checkpoint and then reenter Bethlehem. They are stuck between Jerusalem and the wall.”

Father Abusahlia said in addition to the hardships the barrier is causing local families, clergy and aid organizations, “the wall, once it is completed, will be very ugly for tourists who come to Bethlehem. It will be 30 feet high, worse than the Berlin Wall.”

The Church's position on the barrier “is very clear,” Father Abusahlia said. “This wall will not provide security to Israel and will create more hatred between the two peoples.”

“We have enough walls in Jerusalem,” the priest continued. “To secure the borders, we need to reconcile hearts. The Pope has said it time and time again: We don't need walls, we need bridges.”

Michele Chabin writes from Jerusalem.