Bethlehem's Christians appeal to all pilgrims to visit Nativity
The town where Jesus was born has become "an open-air prison" in which the number of Christians is ever dwindling. A new Israeli checkpoint makes it even harder to visit the town.
A "demand" that each and every pilgrimage includes a visit to Bethlehem, which has now turned into "an open-air prison" in which Christians are confined, "robbed" of their lands by the wall Israel is building, "strangled economically" by the closing off of the city. Priests, religious men and women and lay Christians in Bethlehem have launched an appeal to "Christian pilgrims", urging them to renew pilgrimages to the town where Jesus was born in the lead-up to Christmas, to bring concrete solidarity against this "modern barbarity".
An appeal sent to AsiaNews reads: "Christmas is drawing near and already the hearts and minds of the Christian world are turned towards Bethlehem. All relive the event with a strong desire for brotherhood and peace for themselves and for others.
"However, ahimé, Bethlehem's Christians are closed in an open-air prison by an eight-meter wall, which is robbing them of land essential for their survival. The closure of the traditional route to reach the Basilica of the Nativity and the opening of a new checkpoint which forces even pilgrims to wait for hours to leave Bethlehem, is a form of modern barbarism to strangle a town economically, to impose daily insecurity on a people and to give a semblance of legality to gross religious discrimination: while Jewish believers are allowed to visit Rachel's Tomb in peace, Christians of the Holy Land and the rest of the world meet obstacles to enter and leave Bethlehem."
The letter makes a final appeal: "May Christian pilgrims have courage: this is the time for them to bring their solidarity to Christians in Bethlehem and the Holy Land, ensuring that each pilgrimage includes a visit to Bethlehem."
The appeal of the Christians in Bethlehem underscores the hardship they face and which, already before last Christmas, had led them to voice fears that "Palestine is becoming a Muslim state" and that the very town tied to the birth of Jesus, where Christians were once a majority, may well become totally Muslim. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Christians accounted for 80% of Bethlehem's inhabitants. Today they account for less than 12%.
Emigration is popular among Christians, who depend economically on pilgrimages, and who are plagued by difficulties created by Israel for security reasons and by growing Islamic fundamentalism (which had to attempts to build a mosque in the square of the Nativity). In such a scenario, those who are able to do so, leave the city.
Already in March, the then-mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, had urged international public opinion to take a stand in favour of the town's Christian population, pushed to emigrate above all by a lack of work opportunities created by the pilgrimage crisis. Matters have now been made worse by the new checkpoint set up by Israeli authorities between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And only three months earlier, last December, a report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and of Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process UNSCO had said the region of Bethlehem was surrounded by "78 physical obstacles" erected by the Israeli armed forces, which isolated it from Jerusalem and the rest of Cisjordan.
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