wfn.org | The City of Jesus' Birth Readies Itself for the Millennium

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

13-December-1999 
99415 
 
    The City of Jesus' Birth Readies Itself for the Millennium 
 
    Redevelopment plus promise of peace is boon to Bethlehem 
 
    by Elaine Ruth Fletcher 
    Religion News Service 
 
BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Authority - When Khalil Shokeh attended last 
weekend's inauguration of this ancient city's Bethlehem 2000 millennium 
festivities, he noticed that he was seeing his city in a light that was 
unfamiliar even to him, a native son. 
 
    "Now, for the first time, thanks to all of this cleaning and plastering 
of buildings, I am seeing the real old town as it might have looked 
hundreds of years ago," said the director general of the Bethlehem Chamber 
of Commerce. "It's really a hopeful sign, a sign of peace." 
 
    After months of furious preparations, the Palestinian Authority is 
beginning to showcase the results of its $160 million millennium 
redevelopment project, known as Bethlehem 2000. 
 
    Two years in the making, the project has provided the city with a 
much-needed face lift for the coming year. The hope is it has also laid the 
groundwork for making Bethlehem a more pilgrimage-friendly destination for 
years to come. 
 
    Manger Square, once a dusty, lackluster parking lot in front of the 
famous Church of the Nativity, where tradition holds that Jesus was born, 
is now a broad, stone-paved plaza graced with trees and benches. 
 
    Similarly, the narrow, winding streets that weave from the square 
through Bethlehem's old city markets have been restored to handsome 
pedestrian walkways, with freshly painted blue storefronts. For years, 
these same storefronts were blocked by traffic and blackened by car fumes. 
 
    On Dec. 4, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat lit up an 
enormous Christmas tree in Manger Square to mark the formal start of 
Bethlehem 2000 festivities. Alongside the square, wherean Israeli military 
headquarters once stood, the former Palestinian guerrilla leader also 
dedicated an attractive, Swedish-funded peace center designed to host 
conferences and cultural events for the millennium. 
 
    "The Palestinian Authority ... worked day and night so that Bethlehem 
could be ready for this fabulous occasion," said Arafat's top aide, Tayeb 
Abdel Rahim, speaking on behalf of the Palestinian leader, who sat at a 
table flanked by Jerusalem's Latin (Roman Catholic) and 
Greek Orthodox patriarchs. 
 
    "We worked under a very difficult situation, a lack of infrastructure, 
continued (Jewish) settlement activity and the suffocation of this city 
under Israeli control," Rahim added. 
 
    That's not to say that the work is finished. In the days before and 
after the Saturday kickoff, tourists approaching Bethlehem's holy sites 
were still forced to dodge an obstacle course of roadworks as new sewage, 
water and electric lines are laid throughout the city - in some cases for 
the first time in this century. 
 
    Most of the construction work on the key road arteries should be 
completed by the summer of 2000, promised Mariam Shahin, a spokeswoman for 
the Palestinian Authority's Bethlehem 2000 project. But elsewhere, she 
said, the development work will continue for up to five more years, as 
Palestinians seek to maximize the long-term economic benefit from the 
millennial project, funded by the World Bank, the European Union and the 
United States. 
 
    That time frame, Shahin maintains, is not unreasonable. 
 
    "The average city in Europe took about seven years to rebuild after 
World War II," she observed. "Bethlehem wasn't destroyed in a war, but it 
was a victim of gross neglect for decades." 
 
    On the outskirts of Bethlehem, new tourism projects are getting under 
way even now that could draw the benefits of Bethlehem 2000 out to the 
perimeter of the rapidly growing city of more than 40,000 people. 
 
    South of the city, a massive new conference center and five-star hotel 
complex is rising up in the orchards and grassy knolls around Solomon's 
pools. The ancient reservoir was part of a Roman-era pipeline system to 
Jerusalem and sits in a mountainous setting that retains something of the 
look and feel of the classical biblical landscape of shepherds and 
vineyards. 
 
    The complex, which should be nearly complete by summer, will house a 
5,000-seat auditorium, the largest in the Palestinian Authority territory, 
said Shahin. 
 
    Just north of the city, on the main road to Jerusalem, an elegant old 
Palestinian mansion known as Jacir's Palace has been transformed into the 
facade of a five-star Intercontinental Hotel. The hotel is due to open next 
summer with 250 rooms - a significant boost in lodgings for a city that has 
only 1,300 hotel rooms today. 
 
    Along with the infrastructure projects, Bethlehem 2000 is promoting a 
long list of millennial musical and cultural events, as well as new walking 
and hiking tours in the city and environs to encourage tourists to extend 
their stay in the district. 
 
    Tourists to Bethlehem today typically spend less than an hour in the 
city  before rushing back to their hotels in Jerusalem, Palestinian 
officials say. 
 
    "Our aim is to create circumstances in which they can spend more time 
here,  maybe eat a meal, spend a night and have more human interaction 
rather than just interaction between people and stone," said Shahin. 
 
    One example of the new promotional tactics was evident Dec. 4 when a 
group of about 20 tourists, including a young American couple garbed as a 
pregnant Mary and Joseph, arrived in the city by donkey, ending a 12-day 
trek from the Galilee city of Nazareth. 
 
    The route followed the trail the Holy Family is believed to have 
traveled centuries ago on the eve of Jesus' birth to register for a Roman 
census in Joseph's hometown. Similar "Nativity" tours will be offered six 
times by the Bethlehem 2000 project throughout the year, along with weekly 
nature treks through the Bethlehem area. 
 
    "We have the raw material, in terms of Bethlehem and its holy sites," 
said Shahin. "But we also have historic and cultural areas around Bethlehem 
and the West Bank that we want to link to this project." 
 
    Bethlehem's Chamber of Commerce also is working to improve the 
nightlife in the city for both locals and tourists. 
 
    "We want our merchants to think about opening small attractions that 
might draw business in the evenings, such as musical performances and new 
restaurants," said Shokeh. 
 
    During this holiday season, in which Palestinian Muslims will celebrate 
the fast of Ramadan while Christians celebrate Christmas, shopkeepers have 
been asked to keep their stores open late in the evenings. That, said 
Shokeh, will help draw local residents into the streets after the Ramadan 
fast breaks for the evening - a crucial change in a town that once rolled 
up its sidewalks at sunset. 
 
    "We want to create a nightlife for Bethlehem," he said, "a sense of 
celebration." 
 
    Already, tourism appears to be on the upswing as the renewal of the 
peace process lures wary travelers back to the Middle East again after 
years of bus bombings and political standoff. 
 
    In 1999, some 700,000 tourists visited the city - a 14 percent upswing 
compared to 1998. But that increase is small in comparison to next year's 
numbers, when some 2 million tourists are expected. 
 
    The projected increase in tourism will ideally be translated into an 
economic boom for Bethlehem's shopkeepers and merchants, who have suffered 
repeated economic setbacks - first from the Palestinian "intifada," or 
uprising, and later from the dislocations imposed by the 
infrastructure work around the city. 
 
    Palestinians, however, still are dependent on Israel to realize those 
projections. Not only will the continuation of the peace process be an 
important factor for tourism next year, but cooperation at the local and 
regional level will be essential in smoothing the flow of tourists between 
Jerusalem and Bethlehem, officials note. 
 
    Currently, the Israeli army checkpoint between the two cities poses a 
potential bottleneck that could deter even hardy tour operators from 
venturing through the blockade, which is sometimes closed in times of acute 
security tensions. 
 
    But Yossi Noy, director general of Israel's Year 2000 Authority, said 
that the crossing is now being expanded and checkpoint procedures are being 
revamped to permit Palestinian- and Israeli-operated tours to cross without 
even stopping for a routine check. 
 
    Not only will Palestinian and Israeli tour buses and taxis be able to 
pass unhindered directly between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, but other Israeli 
access points to Bethlehem from the eastern and southern sides of the city 
will be opened to tour operators, he promised. Those access points should 
ease traffic pressures during peak holiday times. 

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