{"id":1037209,"date":"2021-11-20T16:58:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T21:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1037209"},"modified":"2021-11-20T16:58:37","modified_gmt":"2021-11-20T21:58:37","slug":"christmas-in-bethlehem-gilded-treasures-but-few-tourists-and-little-cheer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/christmas-in-bethlehem-gilded-treasures-but-few-tourists-and-little-cheer\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas in Bethlehem: Gilded Treasures, but Few Tourists and Little Cheer"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchristmas-in-bethlehem-gilded-treasures-but-few-tourists-and-little-cheer%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1037209&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Church-of-the-Nativity.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) \u2014 Ahead of Christmas, a towering wooden screen \u2014 once blackened with soot from millions of worshippers\u2019 candles \u2014 is being restored to its gilded glory in the Church of the Nativity, built at the site where many believe Jesus was born.<\/p>\n<p>But few visitors are expected to see it during the upcoming Christmas holiday season.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Biblical Bethlehem has struggled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic almost two years ago. Christmas is normally peak season for tourism in Jesus\u2019 traditional birthplace, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In pre-pandemic times, thousands of pilgrims and tourists from around the world celebrated in the Church of the Nativity and the adjacent Manger Square.<\/p>\n<p>Israel reopened its borders to vaccinated tourists earlier this month, but relatively few are expected to travel to Bethlehem this holiday season, and not nearly as many as in the record-breaking year preceding the pandemic. Most tourists visiting Bethlehem fly into Israel as the West Bank does not have an airport.<\/p>\n<p>Many of Bethlehem\u2019s hotels have shut and shopkeepers have struggled to keep afloat. Aladdin Subuh, a shopkeeper whose store sits just off Manger Square, said he only opens his doors to air out the shop.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s almost Christmas and there\u2019s nobody. Imagine that,\u201d he said, surveying the few passersby in the hopes of spotting a foreigner in search of a souvenir. \u201cFor two years, no business. It\u2019s like dying slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though the pandemic has blighted the Holy Land\u2019s once thriving tourism industry for Israelis and Palestinians alike, for tourism-dependent Bethlehem, the impact has been especially severe. Israel, the primary gateway for foreign tourists, had banned most foreign visitors for the past year and half before this month\u2019s reopening.<\/p>\n<p>Just over 30,000 tourists entered Israel in the first half of November, compared to 421,000 in November 2019, according to Israel\u2019s Interior Ministry.<\/p>\n<p>The Palestinian self-rule government which administers autonomous enclaves in the West Bank has only provided limited support, in the form of tax exemptions and training programs, to hoteliers, tour operators and tour guides, said Majed Ishaq, director of marketing at the Palestinian Tourism Ministry. He said the ministry was launching a campaign to encourage Palestinian citizens of Israel to visit Bethlehem and other West Bank cities over the holiday season. He added that he hopes the number of foreign tourists would be 10% to 20% of pre-pandemic figures.<\/p>\n<p>Others are not so optimistic.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think tourism will come back very soon,\u201d said Fadi Kattan, a Palestinian chef and hotelier in Bethlehem\u2019s Old City. The pandemic forced him to close his Hosh Syrian guesthouse in March 2020, and over the months he had to let his staff go.<\/p>\n<p>He said it was neither financially nor practically feasible to reopen ahead of Christmas, particularly in light of a new wave of coronavirus infections sweeping across Europe. He said it will take years to recover the pandemic\u2019s \u201ccompounded impact over two years\u201d on Bethlehem\u2019s economy \u2014 from hotels and restaurants on down to the farmers, grocers and dry cleaners who depended on their business,<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cTo reopen in security we need to see that there\u2019s a long-term prospect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>On a recent day at the Church of the Nativity, the crown jewel of Bethlehem, a solitary group of Italian tourists entered the 6th-century basilica that in years before COVID-19 would have a line stretching out the door. Municipal workers were starting to string up Christmas lights behind them in Manger Square.<\/p>\n<p>The church has undergone a multi-million dollar facelift since 2013 that was organized by a Palestinian presidential committee. It has restored gold-tiled mosaics and marble floors to their former glory and made major structural repairs to the UNESCO heritage site, one of the oldest churches in Christendom.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>Additional work remains to be done, said Mazen Karam, director of the Bethlehem Development Foundation, the group spearheading some of the restorations at the church. The undertaking has already cost $17 million, but Karam said an additional $2 million are needed to refurbish the church\u2019s flagstones and install firefighting and micro-climate systems.<\/p>\n<p>A separate project by the Greek Orthodox Church to refurbish the once soot-encrusted iconostasis \u2014 a late 18th-century wooden screen separating the sanctuary from the building\u2019s nave \u2014 was delayed by the coronavirus outbreak, but is now nearing completion ahead of Christmas after three years of painstaking work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a big challenge,\u201d said Saki Pappadopoulos, a woodcarver with Artis, a Greek restoration company leading the project.<\/p>\n<p>But Father Issa Thaljieh, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of the Nativity, remains optimistic ahead of the holiday season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank God, a little bit day by day we can see more groups coming to Bethlehem \u2014 not staying in Bethlehem, only maybe for a visit \u2014 but it is a good sign,\u201d he said, standing on church\u2019s recently refinished marble bema, or raised platform. \u201cBethlehem without tourists, without people coming to Bethlehem, is nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) \u2014 Ahead of Christmas, a towering wooden screen \u2014 once blackened with soot from millions of worshippers\u2019 candles \u2014 is being restored to its gilded glory &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1037209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}