Walled in – Bethlehem cut off as Israel grows
The birthplace of Jesus ishemmedin by Israeli developments and cut off from Jerusalem, writes CATHERINE PHILP.
From a barren hill, the settlers look down on snowy Bethlehem. ‘‘Just look at all this nature,’’ rhapsodises Yehuda Nesha as he turns from the fabled biblical town towards the Judean hills. Should the settlers get their way, though, nature will soon be banished from this hill, replaced by the red roofs and golden stone walls of hundreds of new homes, the latest links in a chain of Jewish settlements encircling the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.
As America-backed negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians lumber on, a growing international chorus of voices has warned of the threat that continued settlement building poses to a future peace deal.
Nowhere has the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth been as keenly felt by so many Palestinians as in Bethlehem. The birthplace of Jesus Christ now finds itself hemmed in on all sides by 22 Israeli settlements, the bypass roads that feed them and the vast 8m-high ‘‘separation barrier’’ that snakes around its northern and western sides, cutting off its twin holy city of Jerusalem.
‘‘Our little town has become even smaller due to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements,’’ Vera Baboun, Bethlehem’s mayor, said in a Christmas message appealing to the world to heed their plight.
With little space left to expand, Bethlehem has become more densely populated than Gaza, despite the steady exodus of wealthier residents, mostly Christians, anxious to escape what the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called ‘‘a choking reality’’.
Givat Eitam, the hilltop where two settlers from the nearby sprawling settlement of Efrat recently struck camp, was one of the last green spaces left into which Bethlehem could expand.
An Israeli court declared the hill the property of the state after rejecting eight appeals from Palestinians claiming it as private land. Plans for 2500 new Jewish homes have been drawn up but not yet approved, though permission has been given for the settlers to farm here.
In the meantime, Nesha and his friend Oded have set up camp here, erecting a greenhouse tent where they intend to grow lilies and await the building of Efrat’s next neighbourhood. ‘‘It’s a natural thing to want to expand,’’ says Oded, who refuses to give his surname. It is an option his Palestinian neighbours do not have.
In Beit Sahour, the site where, according to Christian tradition, angels announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds in a field, residents glimpsed a rare chance to expand when the Israeli army abandoned a
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