‘No lights, just darkness’ as Christmas cancelled in Bethlehem
▶ For 2,700 women, grief brings responsibility and the realisation they must step beyond their traditional roles
The normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town yesterday, as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Gaza war.
The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists and jubilant marching bands that gather in the West Bank town each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the empty square. “This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there’s just darkness,” said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.
He said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering, as he gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the thousands of children killed in the fighting in Gaza. Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the colour that normally fill the square during the Christmas season.
The cancellation of Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the town’s economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70 per cent of Bethlehem’s income – almost all of that during the Christmas season.
With many major airlines cancelling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting. Local officials say more than 70 hotels have been forced to close, leaving thousands unemployed.
Gift shops were slow to open on Christmas Eve, although a few did once the rain had stopped. There were few visitors, however.
“We can’t justify putting out a tree and celebrating as normal, when some people [in Gaza] don’t even have houses to go to,” said Ala’a Salameh, one of the owners of Afteem Restaurant, a family-owned falafel spot just steps from the square.
Christmas Eve is usually the busiest day of the year, Mr Salameh said. “Normally, you can’t find a single chair to sit, we’re full from morning until midnight,” he added. This year, just one table was taken, by journalists taking a break from the rain.
Hanan never imagined she would be taking care of her five daughters and three sons without Muhammed, her husband of 25 years. An Israeli air strike in Gaza made her a widow and lone parent on October 16.
Muhammed was killed across the street from their home in the Al Sabra neighbourhood. He had gone to buy bread for the family.
Two months later, his children and wife are huddled in a dilapidated warehouse within Al Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, wondering if they will survive the war, having endured months of Israeli attacks on the enclave.
“Everything is shrouded in black. I feel utterly lost without him,” Hanan, 50, told The National.
She recalled how, on receiving the news of her husband’s death, she felt her “heart shatter with pain”. She experienced an overwhelming sense of grief and a sense of being lost without him, but said she felt obliged to stay strong for her children.
“My eldest son is 22 years old, and my youngest daughter is only seven. Managing the challenges of raising and protecting them alone is an incredibly difficult task for me,” she said.
According to Gaza’s Hamasrun Health Ministry, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7.
The UN said that as of December 19, about 5,150 women had been killed since the war started. It estimated that 2,784 women had “become widows, and possibly new heads of households, following their male partner’s death”.
This loss of the male head of the family, according to the UN, leaves women feeling “an acute sense of vulnerability in relation to the safety and security of both themselves and their female family members”.
The women who have survived
face challenges of the patriarchal social, legal and cultural norms held by some in Gaza that assume women to be under the protection and guardianship of men.
Out of nearly 1.9 million Gazans who have been internally displaced, UN Women estimates that 951,490 are women and girls. Hanan is one. She has been forced to seek shelter in two camps, before renting
the warehouse space. “We were displaced to the Al Maghazi camp following orders from the Israeli authorities instructing residents of northern Gaza to relocate to the south of the wadi,” she said.
“I took my children to the UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp, but the number of displaced people there was overwhelming.
“So, I had to search for another shelter. This was compounded by the absence of Muhammed. If he were alive, he would have, at the very least, provided us with shelter.”
When she reached Al Maghazi camp, the family could not find space at the UNRWA school either, and so, in her despair, Hanan sought the assistance of one of the camp’s residents.
“With his help, I managed to rent a warehouse that lacked even the most basic necessities of life. It doesn’t have a bathroom, and as a result, my children and I have to use the bathroom at the nearby mosque.”
According to the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the overcrowded conditions in shelters and the lack of food and other essentials have put additional strains on Gazans and increased the risk of gender-based violence.
“As winter set in, the situation became even more dire. I lack winter clothes for my children.
“There aren’t enough mattresses, and we don’t have blankets to shield us from the cold and rain,” Hanan said.
Halima lost her husband, Nasser, her 21-year-old son Karim, and her 13-year-old son Salim, in two Israeli air attacks.
She recounts how she watched her sons bleed for hours before they succumbed to their injuries, as ambulances were unable to reach her house in time to help them. Nasser was killed in a separate
Israeli air strike on a supermarket in Rafah. “Nasser had gone to buy milk for my two-year-old daughter Malak when the occupation attacked the crowded supermarket,” she said.
When Israeli forces ordered the residents of northern Gaza to flee to the south, Halima and her family initially resisted.
“We had no idea where to go in the south. We do not have relatives or friends there. So, we made the decision to stay in our home.”
However, Halima’s family finally fled south after Israeli bombings killed her husband and sons, and damaged her house in Beit Lahia.
Halima, 47, and her three daughters were displaced through a so-called “safe” corridor – a journey she describes as “resembling horror movies”.
“Soldiers were positioned in front of us, tanks pointed in our direction. We moved in groups, reminiscent of the Day of Resurrection.
We walked for nine hours and later rode a donkey cart, before finally reaching the displacement tents in Rafah.
“Inside the tent, conditions were catastrophic, inhumane, and unfit for human life. There is a severe shortage of water, food, and basic necessities.
“The war itself is brutal and unforgiving, but enduring it within a displacement tent with my three daughters after losing my husband and sons makes it even more brutal,” she said.
“I struggle to provide even basic necessities like sanitary pads for my daughters. I fear venturing out to the market, worried that I might be killed, leaving my daughters as orphans.
“Losing Nasser equates to losing my entire life. I am now left alone, homeless, and displaced with three daughters.”
The war is brutal, but enduring it after losing my husband and sons makes it even more brutal HALIMA
Gaza widow
Apicture is worth a thousand words, it is said. If so, then the image of a melancholy nativity scene taken earlier this month in Bethlehem – the birthplace of Jesus – describes the bleak character of this year’s Christmas celebrations with an unsettling immediacy.
The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in the West Bank city set up a nativity display of the infant Jesus, a traditional practice for many Christians at this time of year. However, in a sad twist, instead of the newborn child lying in a manger surrounded by family and visitors, the Jesus of December 2023 reclines amid lumps of broken masonry and is wrapped in a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf.
It is a message that reminds the world that although for millions of Christians the festival is meant to be a time for peace, prayer and family, for Palestinians in the Holy Land it is taking place in the shadow of war and death. The continuing destruction being wrought on Gaza’s citizens after the Hamas attacks of October 7 has led to the cancellation of Christmas events elsewhere in Palestine and have muted many more celebrations worldwide. For a religious festival with its roots in the Middle East, this is a profound moment of sorrow.
In Gaza, Palestinian Christians have been suffering alongside their Muslim neighbours during an increasingly unrecoverable war. Israeli forces shot at Gaza’s Holy Family church on December 16, claiming the life of a mother and daughter who had sought refuge there, drawing strong condemnation not only from local bishops, but from Pope Francis who stated: “Some are saying, ‘This is terrorism and war.’ Yes, it is war, it is terrorism.”
But Palestinian Christians have also faced terrible suffering in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have effectively locked down cities and towns, making it extremely difficult for people to enter Bethlehem and other parts of the Palestinian territories. Christmas celebrations there have been cancelled for the first time in decades in a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza. The last time Christmas was cancelled there was in 1987 during the First Intifada, according to Fr Peter DuBrul, a veteran priest who has worked in Bethlehem for nearly five decades.
In Jerusalem too, Christian communities have faced threats and intimidation, with numerous incidents of vandalism as well as verbal and physical abuse carried out by hardline Jewish activists, long before the current war in Gaza.
For Christians, the story of the birth of Jesus is one of hope against the odds and of triumph against diversity. It is important to remember that no conflict, no matter how difficult, is insoluble when the right will and good faith are present.
A faint glimmer of such hope was seen this week as diplomacy at the UN moved forward incrementally with the Security Council’s adoption of a resolution to increase aid and set conditions for a reduction in violence. But a true miracle in line with the core values of Christmas would be an immediate and lasting halt to the violence.