If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.
“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” says the priest of Bethlehem’s Beit Jala parish. “He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission — or to have been tourists.
“This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?”
Photo: Bloomberg
Bethlehem is the heart of Christian Palestine and it swells with pride every Christmas. Manger Square is transformed into a grotto of lights and stalls crowned by a towering Christmas tree. Strings of illuminated angels, stars and bells festoon the streets. But just a few minutes’ drive to the north, the festive atmosphere stops abruptly.
A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18km2 of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem. To the Israeli authorities, these have been neighborhoods of Jerusalem since 1967. One of the settlements, Har Homa, is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds. A narrow corridor of land between Har Homa and another settlement, Gilo, still connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem but the construction of Givat Hamatos, a new settlement announced this October, will fill this in a matter of years.
The EU and UN routinely denounce Israel’s unilateral settlement expansion but in October, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton warned the construction of Givat Hamatos was “of particular concern as [it] would cut the geographic contiguity between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.”
Photo: Bloomberg
European concern is not slowing Israel’s progress. Earlier this month, 500 new units were approved for Har Homa, a further 348 in Betar Illit, on Bethlehem’s western boundary, and an additional 267 units were sanctioned for settlements running up to the edge of the city’s southern suburbs, where the Ministry of Defense also gave settlers permission to start a farm on Palestinian land. This is in addition to the 6,782 new apartments already slated for Har Homa, Gilo and Givat Hamatos.
In the short term, the closure won’t make a big difference to everyday life in Bethlehem: the separation wall already prevents Palestinians from entering Jerusalem from the town without an Israeli permit.
But this ring of settlements will permanently change the geography of the historic landscape: even if a peace agreement razes the separation wall, the two cities will remain divided.
Photo: Bloomberg
Israeli activist Hargit Ofram, director of Peace Now, reads a clear political intention in Israel’s plans: “These efforts are being made to prevent a possible two-state solution because in order for that to work, you would need a viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
“If that capital is going to be surrounded by settlements, Israel would have to remove them. The more Israel is building, the higher the price of a Palestinian state is becoming.”
A coalition of 20 rights organizations including Oxfam and Amnesty International warned earlier this month that the number of Palestinian homes demolished in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities had doubled in the past year.
Photo: REUTERS
Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, 13 percent of Bethlehem now falls within Areas A and B controlled by the Palestinian Authority. This area houses 87.6 percent of the Palestinian population. The rest falls in Area C, where Israel controls who builds what.
The al-Makour valley is Bethlehem’s last green space and one of few areas left for urban expansion. It is in Area C and overlooked by Gilo checkpoint at one end and Har Homa settlement on the other. Israel’s separation wall is slated to run through the middle of the valley. No Palestinian has been given a permit to build here since 1967.
Despite Israel’s building restrictions, Miranda Nasry Qasasfeh spent every weekend of the past year renovating a stone storehouse owned by her husband’s family for 150 years. She built a new iron roof and had planted almond, plum and eskadinia trees, which were about to bear their first fruit. Hers was one of four Palestinian structures in al-Makour demolished on Dec. 12. Most of the trees were uprooted.
Qasasfeh’s 75-year-old father rushed to the site of the demolition, where he found his daughter in deep distress. Hours later, he suffered a stroke and is now paralyzed down his left side. Given the events of the past week, Qasasfeh has postponed putting up Christmas decorations.
“The Israeli commander told me that I have nothing here, that it is not my land. But it is and we need to live and expand. What other choice do we have? Should I go an build on someone else’s land?” she asks.
But despite the destruction of her property, Miranda Qasasfeh still has hope that the political situation will change. She has threatened to disown her eldest son if he carries out his threat of leaving Bethlehem to find work elsewhere.
“I keep telling my children, planting it in their minds, there is nowhere else in the world like this. We cannot leave.” She adds: “And we have Christmas. For a few days at least we can forget, or try to forget, what is happening here.”
Father Shomali’s outlook is more glum: “When I look down my church register, many of the historic family names from the area have already gone. In 20 years, I think we will have no more Christians
in Bethlehem.”
Jad Isaac, an expert in Bethlehem’s demographics and a consultant to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, says aside from the physical restrictions on development, Bethlehem’s economy is being strangled by the loss of land and restrictions on Palestinian movement.
With work in Jerusalem now impossible to all but the 6,000 granted permits to work inside Israel, unemployment in Bethlehem sits at 23 precent, poverty levels simmer at 18 percent. Many have little option but to work illegally building the nearby settlements. Isaac’s forecast is bleak.
“The little town of Bethlehem? It will soon be the little ghetto surrounded in all directions by Israeli settlements,” he predicts. “We’ve already passed the stage where Bethlehem can be saved. Frankly, that’s why I don’t celebrate Christmas
any more.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby