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From The Jordan Times December 20, 2001
It is going to be sad
Christmas in Bethlehem this year. In a matter of days, churches
across
the world will hold
Christmas Eve mass to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the city of
peace
and joy.
But Bethlehem itself-
the biblical West Bank town in the hills just south of Jerusalem,
celebrated in familiar
holiday carols and commemorated in Christmas cards and
school-pageant
crèches-has come to epitomize the hardships and sorrows of the
Palestinians, in their
15th month of uprising against the Israeli occupation.
The people of Bethlehem
have suffered military attacks on the hills and valleys where the
shepherds in the
Christmas story “watched their fields by night”. In October while
Bethlehem
residents prayed during
Sunday mass, Israeli soldiers fired machinegun rounds at the
Church of the Nativity.
Inside the main hospital
where I worked as a medical technician two years ago, a patient
was killed, a technician
was shot and injured, and a UN ambulance driver and doctor were
wounded. A 10-years-old
boy was shot dead outside his school in one of Bethlehem’s tree
refugee camps. A mother
of eight was mowed down by machinegun fire in the doorway of
her home. Within the
span of just four days during the month of October alone, 20
residents
of Bethlehem were
killed. All but three were unarmed civilians.
All of this has created
a bizarre disconnect between the Bethlehem of today’s reality and
the Bethlehem that the
rest of the world pays homage to during the Christmas holidays.
I remember how, just two
years ago when I happened to be in this ancient city during the
Christmas season, the
streets were lit up with festive lights and shops were adorned with
cheerful banners. An
international collection of choirs sang the good tidings of the
angels
and street performers
entertained children, with magical shows. On Christmas Eve, as part
of the celebration,
thousands of doves were released into the sky above Manger Square-
the big stone plaza
fronting the church of the Nativity and the traditional site of
Christ’s
birth- an offering of
peace from Palestine to the world.
This year, the skies
above Bethlehem are blackened by Apache helicopters, the giddy
wonder in children’s
eyes has been replaced by fear and anxiety, and the only visible
lights
are the blaze of
exploding missiles and beams of helicopters hovering low above the
homes of terrified
families. Instead of the sounds of joyous choirs, they now hear the
death
whistles of bullets and
the explosions of tank shells raining on churches, mosques and
schools.
Two years ago, Manger
Square was alive with tourist, guides and pilgrims. Today, the
square is occupied by
Israeli tanks. A debate rages over whether a large Christmas tree in
the square should be
decorated r remain bare this year. Some are suggesting its branches
be adorned with
photographs of the nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed in battles with
Israeli
soldiers, which have
raged daily since September of last year. But the people of
Bethlehem,
in what is perhaps the
ultimate statement of the hopeful Christmas spirit, remain convinced
that faith will pull
them through this ordeal, and that they will eventually be saved
from the
constant bombardment of
their homes and religious shrines.
During a conversation
with close friends in Bethlehem recently, they read me the text of a
defiant sermon delivered
by the cleric, in which he tried to raise his congregation’s
traumatized spirit with
these words: “Whether we life at war or in the Intifada, whether our
houses are demolished,
our brothers wounded or killed, it is here that God wants us to be
Christians This is our
land, to claim our freedom among our demolished houses and in our
besieged towns and
villages.”
Two thousand years ago,
the angels proclaimed to the shepherds of this region: “Do not be
afraid.” Today we are
all called upon to echo this message to the frightened people of
Bethlehem and to remind
them that these are not empty words or “cheap grace”, but rather
a concrete action
towards a just tomorrow.
And so, as Christmas is
celebrated in homes around the world, those who celebrate it
should remember that
Christian holy places are under siege and that as long as an entire
population, stripped of
human dignity and freedom, is forced to live under military
occupation, peace on
earth will elude us.
As we bow our heads on
Christmas Eve and sing “O, Little Town of Bethlehem: we should
remember that Bethlehem
will be dark this Christmas. That remembrance should be joined
with a promise to never
forget those who live with the daily reality of oppression and
displacement.
Meanwhile, the people of
Bethlehem will find succour in their churches, and mosques,
families and faiths,
even as they are bound by oppression, and look for inspiration in
the
hymn of Majda Rumi:
“Child of the manger, expand your manger/ My homeland is cold; give
it back its innocence/
So that, in the darkness of the times, it may once more be a light
to
the world.
The writer, a
Palestinian-American, is a PhD candidate at George Washington
University and the Washington, DC
regional director of Palestine Media Watch. She contributed this
article to The Jordan Times.
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