[Bloquez l'empire!] Globe and Mail - Wall casts shadow over Bethlehem

[aaron at resist.ca]

Wall casts shadow over Bethlehem

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051223.wxbethlehem24/BNStory/International/

By MARK MACKINNON

Saturday, December 24, 2005 Posted at 12:23 AM EST

>From Saturday's Globe and Mail

 Bethlehem — These should be the most festive of times in what is, for
many, among the holiest of places. Instead, the mood in Bethlehem in the
lead-up to Christmas has had a pall cast over it by the latest growth in
what residents here loathingly refer to as "the wall."

"Look around. It's just a few days before Christmas and there's not 10
people in Bethlehem," sighed Naser Alawy, a souvenir vendor, waving his
hand around a deserted Manger Square.

After four consecutive holiday seasons blighted by the bloody intifada,
residents here had been hoping for an influx of tourists this Christmas
season to boost the city out of its prolonged economic slump.

Tourism across the quasi-border in Israel has increased dramatically this
year as the violence ebbs, and Bethlehem was beginning to see the benefits
of that in recent months.


More and more pilgrims were making the 15-minute drive south from
Jerusalem to the city where, according to the Bible, Jesus Christ was
born.

But on Nov. 15, Israel sealed one of the last remaining gaps in the
eight-metre-high concrete wall it is building along Bethlehem's northern
border.

Pilgrims trying to reach the holy city were directed to cross through a
new system of passport checks, iron turnstiles and metal detectors.

Individual travellers are now often forbidden from taking their vehicles
inside Bethlehem, and are forced instead to cross on foot through a
massive bunker that resembles a bomb shelter in shape, before hailing a
taxi on the other side.

Tour groups on buses only have to show their passports to enter, but upon
returning to Israel must cross on foot through the bunker and pass the
airport-style security. There's no apparent wheelchair accessibility.

"If Mary and Joseph were here today, they would go through the checkpoint
just like everybody else," Sister Erica, a nun, complained to a reporter
last week after making the crossing.

Based on anecdotal evidence, tourism in Bethlehem, already at a low ebb,
has taken a fresh hit since the new checkpoint began operating. Many shop
owners in the city said last week that business was so bad that they
wouldn't bother opening until right before Christmas Day. Hotel owners
complained that tourists who had made reservations to stay overnight in
the city were returning to Jerusalem ahead of schedule, worried they would
have trouble crossing back into Israel if they stay too long.

"It's a tragedy. People shouldn't be building walls here, they should be
building bridges," said Xavier de Dumast, a 45-year-old French pilgrim who
recently visited the Church of the Nativity. "I was here five years ago,
and it was alive, people were everywhere. Now it's completely dead. It's a
prison."

The checkpoint is actually situated well inside the Bethlehem governorate,
slicing about 750 acres of agricultural land away from the city.
Everything on the other side, including thick olive groves that numerous
Bethlehemites depended on for their livelihoods, is now considered by
Israel to be part of an expanded Jerusalem.

A section of the security barrier juts deep into Bethlehem so that
Rachel's Tomb, a site holy to Judaism as the resting place of Jacob's
wife, is on the Israeli side of the wall, making it easily accessible to
tourists and effectively annexing it to Israel. Under the 1994 Oslo
Accords, Rachel's Tomb and the entire Bethlehem governorate were supposed
to be under full Palestinian control.

The Bethlehem security terminal is the first to open of 16 such crossings
that Israel plans to build in the highly controversial, 680-kilometre-long
West Bank barrier. The others are supposed to be ready by early 2006.

Israel says the new security measures are necessary because, although
Bethlehem has a reputation as one of the quieter parts of the West Bank,
suicide bombers from other parts had taken advantage of the old,
relatively loose crossing at Bethlehem to reach Israeli cities.

Highlighting that the city is not as calm as it often seems, masked gunmen
last week took over Bethlehem city hall, which sits right on Manger
Square, in a dispute over unpaid salaries.

"The reason why we have the security fence and the crossing there is
strictly for security alone. A much lower level of attacks has come from
Bethlehem since the fence was built there," said Israeli police spokesman
Mickey Rosenthal.

However, under pressure from Christian groups and tour operators — and
aware that they risked a public-relations disaster — the Israeli military
announced on Dec. 19 that it was temporarily easing the crossing by
requiring only randomly selected tourists to go through the new terminal.

The lighter regime would apply only until the end of the Christmas season,
an army spokesman said, when the stricter rules would be re-applied.

The Vatican was among those who complained. In his traditional
pre-Christmas press conference, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel
Sabbah, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land, said the
wall around Bethlehem had turned the city into a "big prison."

A Palestinian Authority official keeping tabs on the number of foreign
tourists in town said less than 100 people passed through the church's
three-foot-high front entrance on the day Mr. de Dumast was there, well
below the normal daily range of 200 to 800 tourists.

Jack Elias, owner of the Star Hotel in Bethlehem, blames the new security
measures for the loss of a group of 70 Czech tourists that left his hotel
just four days into a seven-day reservation. He said his guests told him
they felt uncomfortable feeling so sealed off from Jerusalem and the
airport in Tel Aviv.

"In the future, tourists will only visit for the day. They will not stay
overnight in Bethlehem," Mr. Elias predicted.

On the main shopping street connecting Manger Square to the Milk Grotto
chapel, only two of 25 souvenir stores on one stretch were open on the
same afternoon. Nearly every family in Bethlehem is in some way reliant on
the tourist trade for income, so the economic blow has been a heavy one
for the city's 30,000 residents.

Despite the gloom, Manger Square was nonetheless decked out with glowing
stars and images of Santa Claus. The mayor said he is planning a
celebration in spite of it all.

"This is for the citizens of Bethlehem, so that they enjoy Christmas like
anywhere else, and to tell the tourists to come to Bethlehem and enjoy the
holy city," said Mayor Victor Batarseh.

But for all his attempts at good cheer, he confessed the situation was
becoming increasingly desperate. "We need tourists, we need pilgrims to
come to Bethlehem," he said plaintively. "We need them to break this wall,
not with violence, but with their mass crossings."