Tensions Thin Ranks of Bethlehem Tourists

Christian and Muslim worshipers crisscrossed Bethlehem’s Manger Square on Friday as Christmas and Ramadan faithful filled the churches and mosques of the Palestinian-ruled West Bank town.

The ecumenical spirit brought little holiday cheer to tourism-dependent Bethlehem officials, disappointed that U.S. and British military strikes on Iraq and tensions with Israel have scared away visitors with their badly needed foreign exchange.

The bells of the 6th century Church of the Nativity summoned several hundred Palestinian Christians and foreign pilgrims to Christmas Day Mass in the town revered as the birthplace of Jesus.

A Muslim call to prayer rang out from a minaret on the opposite side of tinsel-decked Manger Square to draw worshipers to the first Friday prayers of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Hundreds of other Muslims streamed out of Bethlehem toward Jerusalem to join about 150,000 faithful for Friday prayers in Al-Aqsa mosque.

Only a few hundred foreigners made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem on Christmas Day, disappointing street hawkers selling postcards, olive-wood souvenirs and votive candles.

“It could be so much better, like the old days,” mourned souvenir vendor Abu Michael, recalling tourism boom days before the 1987 Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli rule.

The city came under Palestinian self-rule in 1995, but Israeli-Palestinian interim accords have not delivered a peace dividend.

Residents hope that a multimillion-dollar tourism project called Bethlehem 2000 will bring them a more joyful Christmas in 12 months.

“Next year the world will celebrate with joy and hope the great event of Bethlehem, and yet Bethlehem is still unable to enjoy the message that has been given to the world through it,” Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of the Holy Land, told worshipers in his Christmas Eve midnight Mass address.

On Dec. 15, hundreds of Palestinians waving U.S. flags packed Manger Square to give President Clinton an enthusiastic welcome during a Middle East peace mission and pre-Christmas visit to Bethlehem.

Three days later, after Clinton had launched a bombardment of Iraq, Palestinian protesters in Bethlehem scrubbed the paving stones on the square to erase all traces of his visit.

Yet spirited foreigners who made pilgrimages from South Korea, the Philippines, Europe, and North and South America displayed little interest in politics on the Christian holy day.