Religious tourism denied in isolated Bethlehem

[Englander]

Religious tourism and freedom of movement denied in isolated Bethlehem
Maureen Clare Murphy writing from Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, Live From Palestine, 23 December 2004

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3452.shtml

"It is quite simple. We have no business," a shopkeeper in Bethlehem's Old City tells me when I ask him how his business is faring after four years of Intifada and intensified Israeli military occupation. Camels and religious figures carved out of olive wood sit neatly and undisturbed on their shelves. His inventory is the same as it was four years ago. Since no one comes into his store to buy his souvenirs, he doesn't replenish his stock. And because businessmen like him are not ordering more merchandise, the factories in Bethlehem are at a standstill.

However, cheerful international media reports on Bethlehem make it seem as though the historic is enjoying a rebirth of tourism. An Associated Press article reports that the city is "often still full of tour buses," and because of a November joint agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian Ministers of Tourism to cooperate to help build their respective tourism industries, the press is singing hopeful songs about the revival of religious pilgrims to the area.

It has been reported that during the Christmas season, an Israeli Tourism Ministry official will greet religious tourists with bags of sweets at the Gilo checkpoint that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem, named after the illegal Israeli settlement nearby. But there was no such reception for this visitor Wednesday morning. Instead, I was made to wait on a bench for fifteen minutes while the bored Israeli soldiers flipped through a car magazine before they finally checked my passport and let me through, asking me brusquely in Arabic what I was intending to do in Bethlehem, and what I was planning on buying.

"The economy in Bethlehem is dramatically different now ," the shopkeeper in the Old City says, explaining that people are living off of savings accumulated during the tourism boom right after the Oslo Accords and before the current Intifada that broke out late September 2000. Unemployment is rampant, and in the last four years, nearly 10 percent of Bethlehem's Christian population has immigrated abroad, causing much worry about the disintegration of the town's cultural diversity.


Maureen Clare Murphy is currently in Ramallah doing an internship with the Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq, where this story was also published. She is also Arts, Music and Culture Editor for EI.

www.alhaq.org/

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