It takes a cataclysmic war to allow one to contemplate, without the presence of another soul, the shrine marking the spot where the world’s most popular religion began.
The Grotto of the Manger, beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, is deserted. Usually queues at the birthplace of Jesus Christ resemble security at a busy airport. No longer.
One million foreign tourists visit Bethlehem each year. But, by 11am, on October 7, some five hours after Hamas launched its murderous rampage, the streets of the Old City had emptied. By October 10, every tourist had left.
‘We will be closed until next June,’ says Samir at the Bethlehem Inn. ‘The foreign groups have all cancelled. Even if the war was to end tomorrow they wouldn’t come back.
‘On October 7, we had a Czech party who went on a day trip to Tiberius and never returned because they were evacuated from there by military jet.’ He pauses and adds, almost as an afterthought, ‘At least we are still alive.’
Mail writer Richard Pendlebury pictured inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said to be Jesus’s birthplace
Bethlehem was quiet this last week, as the Israeli Defence Forces conducted raids against Hamas in other parts of the West Bank
A man walks past a section of Israel’s separation barrier on November 6, 2023 in Bethlehem in the West Bank
Mail writer Richard Pendlebury and photographer Jamie Wiseman
Bethlehem was quiet this last week, as the Israeli Defence Forces conducted raids against Hamas in other parts of the West Bank.
Yet the little town remains in the eye of a storm that threatens any future peace negotiations.
We had been invited to lunch in the Old City by a group of Palestinian friends, both Christian and Sunni Muslim. Bethlehem, for all its cosy, carolling image, shows the great disconnect here.
On the short journey south from Jerusalem we follow the dystopian West Bank Barrier built to separate Israel proper from potential Palestinian suicide attacks. A sign at the IDF checkpoint at the gates to Bethlehem warns that no Israeli citizens are permitted to enter.
We pass along the road that runs beside King Solomon’s Pools which glint green with fetid antiquity. On a ridgeline above, the 21st Century condos of the Israeli settlement of Efrat overlook Palestinian Authority-administered streets with their decrepit housing, potholed roads and uncollected garbage.
The centre of the Old City is very different; the warren of ancient cobbled streets has been charmingly restored with funds provided by foreign aid. But the shops and hotels are shuttered; Manger Square, deserted.
We eat houmous and falafel outside a Palestinian Christian-owned souvenir shop. Present are the owner George, his son Michael, 23, Palestinian Christian tour guide Saif and a Sunni Muslim, Ahmed. George is on the verge of tears.
This should be Bethlehem’s ‘high season’ in the run-up to Christmas and his shop might expect to take $8,000 a day. ‘But now, zero!’ he cries.
‘Forty families who make these souvenirs depend on my shop. We are in shock. The men have no work. They don’t even have enough money for cigarettes, only to feed the kids. Imagine that! They made agreement in [the Oslo Accords] 1993 and they said then ‘peace’. But it’s all bull****.’
People attend funeral ceremony of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces on November 3
Israeli Security forces take intensive safety measures after 2 Israeli policemen were wounded in a knife attack in Al-Sahira Gate of East Jerusalem
‘Three or four hundred young Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis in the West Bank in the last two years,’ responds Saif. ‘This is not the first, not second, nor the last war for us.’
‘This is The End of Days,’ Ahmed chips in.
George says: ‘Six months ago Ahmed began telling me to be ready for the end of the world. And I laughed. And then this happens!’
‘Nothing will change,’ Saif counters. ‘This war will stop and both sides will have lost. But what happened on October 7 didn’t come from nothing. It came from pressure on the Palestinian people.’
All the men agree that if a free election were ever to be held in the West Bank, the ruling – and relatively moderate – Fatah party wouldn’t be returned and the Palestinians here would usher in Hamas.
‘The corruption of this government is incredible,’ says Ahmed. ‘They are a Mafia! The Israelis pay them to keep the West Bank quiet and they put all the money in their pockets. It would be better for us even under Israeli control.’
Saif says: ‘Hamas would change one thing. And that is the [Israeli] settlers [here] would start to be afraid.’
One of the main sources of tension between the two groups here are the olive trees and olive oil for which Bethlehem is famous.
The hills about are covered in groves and this is harvest time. But Bethlehem is also surrounded by West Bank Jewish settlements. Since October 7, tension between heavily armed and fearful – or vengeful – settlers and their Palestinian neighbours has exploded into violence.
Nine days ago, an off-duty member of the IDF was arrested for allegedly shooting dead a Palestinian farmer trying to harvest his olive crop. In the early hours of one day last week, Jewish settlers came in cars and shot up George’s home village on the outskirts of Bethlehem, he says. The men believe the attackers came from Efrat.
On Sunday, according to the Israeli press, the far-Right Jewish politician Zvi Sukkot called for a ban on this year’s West Bank olive harvest. It threatens the safety of the Jewish settlements, he said. ‘We are already losing the harvest of my family’s olive trees,’ says Saif. ‘In the last three years I am afraid to leave this city after sunset.
Israeli border police forces frisk people entering annexed east Jerusalem through Damascus Gate
‘The problem is the settlers. Now they have become so mad and no government, no police or authority will stop them. There is no justice, no freedom, no safety for us.’
After lunch, we drive up into the rugged West Bank hill country that’s surely changed little since the Nativity.
Hard against the highway at Khalyel Loz, a Palestinian is busy in the upper branches of an olive tree, his family gathering the fruit below. They have 40 trees on this vertiginous roadside plot, he says, just enough to make oil for themselves for the year.
They also own 100 acres towards Efrat. ‘But it’s just too dangerous,’ he says. ‘The settlers won’t let us approach them now.’
We drive on, skirting south round Efrat, through a landscape of empty groves that would otherwise be busy with harvesters.
In one Palestinian village, directions are spray-painted onto buildings to guide travellers away from the guns and road blocks of the nearby Israeli settlement.
An armed man looks after his child on the Western wall in Jerusalem on November 6
We stop to talk to a Palestinian farmer called Dahoud and his two primary school-age sons. They are harvesting olives from a grove of 70 trees directly overlooked by Efrat, no more than half-a-mile away.
Dahoud says his family has farmed this land for 250 years. But since October 7, he doesn’t dare cross to the Efrat side of this narrow road, where the fruit of 800 of his trees is ready. ‘They [the Israeli settlers] would shoot me.’
The following day, we visit Efrat. Some 500,000 Israelis live in more than 120 settlements in the occupied West Bank that was, until 1967, controlled by the Jordanians.
The UN considers these settlements a violation of international law and an obstacle to lasting peace. Israel disagrees.
Efrat, established in 1980, is one of the largest Israeli West Bank settlements with a population of 15,000. And while there has yet to be a direct, post-October 7, attack, it is effectively a hilltop city under siege.
The difference in living standards enjoyed by the settlers and those Palestinians living in Bethlehem is stark.
There is a Californian, suburban vibe to Efrat’s urban planning and municipal efficiency. Domestic waste is separated into recycling bins by the shopping mall with its Bagel Cafe and immaculate flower beds.
Friends and relatives of Israeli hostages abducted by Palestinian militants on the October 7 attack gather outside the Knesset in Jerusalem
We meet the mayor, a lawyer called Oded Revivi, who is blunt about how the world has changed and why the Palestinian olive farmers are right to be fearful.
‘We have a security challenge now,’ he says. ‘We are very close to three Arab villages and the city of Bethlehem. Up until October 7 we relied on our very good relationships with our [Arab] neighbours. We did not even have a [security] fence.
‘But since October 7 our reality has changed. Fear and distrust have risen to levels never seen before.
‘We can see why local Arabs are afraid that Jews won’t be understanding as they were in the past. But we are in danger. There has been a massive breach of trust.’
He adds as we part: ‘I say to your friends on the Bethlehem side: ‘What are you doing against these terrorist acts? How vocal are you in your condemnation of October 7?’
‘Israel has offered all sorts of suggestions to bring peace and all of these offers have been rejected… by the Palestinians.
‘Recently, more and more Arab states have been rebuilding relations with Israel, because they realise that it is the Palestinians who are the obstacle to peace.’
Before we leave Efrat we stop to look towards Bethlehem.
The distance is less than a mile. But in terms of peace and community relations, it feels like an unbridgeable chasm.