The Christians in Bethlehem Now Live in an Overwhelmingly Muslim Town

A report on the increasing despair of Christians in Bethlehem: “‘We may face extinction’: Bethlehem’s clergy sound alarm on exodus and extremism amid ongoing war,” by Giorgia Valente, The Media Line, December 26, 2024:

Anna, an Aramean Christian tour operator, told The Media Line, “I have been jobless since October 7. I am currently economically relying on my husband, who sells electronic devices in his shop here, but we have been struggling since neither the PA [Palestinian Authority] nor Israel has been able to help us financially. I used to take tourists on tours in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but everything changed.”

Anna criticized polarized narratives about the conflict, saying, “I am against any form of violence, and what both sides did to one another is unacceptable. For this reason, I am against the choice of each side to portray itself as the ‘only victims’ because, in this way, they are just polarizing, even more, the perception of this conflict abroad.”

Anna, a Christian living in a Muslim sea, is careful not to lay the blame for Bethlehem’s economic misery on either side —-the Israelis or the Palestinians — though she surely knows that the violence of the Muslim terrorists provoked the Gaza War, and in the West Bank has made necessary the frequent IDF raids. The violence in both places have led foreign tourists to stay away from Bethlehem this year. But Anna can’t allow herself to say that openly. She’s going to sit on the fence, claiming that “what both sides did to one another is unacceptable.” She’s wrong. What Hamas did on October 7, 2023, when 6,000 Hamas members smashed into Israel, torturing, raping, mutilating, and murdering 1,200 Israelis is “unacceptable.. The IDF’s response — a careful campaign in Gaza to kill as may terrorists, and spare as many civilians, as possible — is not only acceptable but admirable, for the tremendous efforts the IDF makes to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted, by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text messages, and making millions of robocalls. But Anna is a Christian living in a town that is 90% Muslim. She doesn’t want trouble. She can’t possibly tell the truth.

“The beauty of our Holy Land, which I gladly define as a whole, despite walls dividing one side from the other, is that there is no black and white, but different shades, that people from the outside often do not see,” she added.

Her husband, a Palestinian ID holder, cannot travel freely as Anna and their children can. She emphasized teaching her children tolerance: “My goal was to teach my kids no resentment toward anyone. The problem of many living here is that they pass their trauma to younger generations and teach hate instead of forgiveness. If we keep doing like this, we will be stuck in this loop of violence forever—Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike,” she noted.

The only children who are raised up to hate “the other” are the Muslim children. The schoolbooks of the Jews and the Christians are not full of the venomous violence found in the schoolbooks provided by UNRWA to Muslim children.

Abood Sobha, a Muslim tour guide and souvenir shop owner, echoed Anna’s struggles. “I am a Muslim Palestinian who benefited from tourism and loved engaging with people from all over the world. I was comfortable economically before the war, and I loved to move from my city to other places like Haifa and Tel Aviv [he was clearly not living in an “open-air prison”] but since I own a Palestinian ID, I have been stuck here for more than a year, and I am mentally exhausted,” he told The Media Line.

“We need and want peace, and we cannot keep going like this. Unfortunately, it seems that here in the West Bank, it may even get worse. Look at Jenin and Tulkarem these days,” he added….

In Jenin, there is a war going on between Hamas and Islamic Jihad on one side, and Fatah — the armed wing of the Palestinian Authority — on the other. Right now, the IDF is letting Fatah attempt on its own to suppress Hamas and the PIJ in Jenin camp. In Tulkarem, it is the IDF itself that is taking on Hamas and PIJ combatants. What Abood Sobha fears is that as long as there is violence in Judea and Samaria, tourists will stay away from Bethlehem, but he is unwilling to blame Hamas and PIJ for stirring up strife by attacking both Fatah and the IDF.

The steady stillicide of Christians moving out of Bethlehem continues. In 2017, there were 23,000 Christians in Bethlehem. In 2024, that figure has dropped to fewer than 10,000. How can religious tourism in Bethlehem by foreign Christians be expected to flourish when there are only a few thousand Christians left in the city? Will Christians from abroad, once made aware of the reasons for the precipitous decline in Bethlehem’s Christian population, want to buy Christian souvenirs from Muslim shopkeepers, the very people who helped drive Christians out of the one of the most sacred sites in Christendom?

The Christians in Bethlehem live now in an overwhelmingly Muslim town, a town that was 85% Christian in 1947 is now 90% Muslim, and the Muslim percentage of the population grows with each passing year. The Christians have been leaving the city to avoid the constant pressure of trying to thrive in the midst of a hostile population. Even if religious tourism returns, and the handful of Christian-owned souvenir shops sell their olive-wood creches and crucifixes, and Christian tour guides resume their occupation, how long can the dwindling Christian community withstand the pressures of living in a Muslim sea? And how many foreign Christians will want to frequent Muslim-owned shops in Bethlehem where their coreligionists are close to disappearing?