A pilgrim preaching peace and love in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, I left the street cats of Tel Aviv behind and boarded a bus for Jerusalem. After dumping my belongings at the Petra Hostel, located within the walls of the Old City, myself, two Frenchmen and a Dutch backpacker hailed a cab and sped off towards Bethlehem to witness the midnight antics at the Church of the Nativity.
Ten minutes down the road was the IDF checkpoint, and our driver was forced to leave us on the Israeli side of the roadblock. As an Arab-Israeli, he is forbidden to cross through to the other side. It being Christmas Eve, and us being pasty white foreigners, we had no problem at the checkpoint. We walked a brief stretch through the strip of razor wire and watchtowers, and eventually jumped into another taxi that took us into town.
Before arriving at our destination, however, our taxi was directed to pull off the road by local police. We got out of the vehicle, and crossed the street just in time to see a long motorcade fly past us, containing no one other than Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas), the interim Palestinian president and de facto president-elect. He had just finished a meeting with British PM Tony Blair, and would soon join us — and hundreds of tourists, Christian pilgrims, and local Palestinians — at the Church of the Nativity for the midnight service.
After a leisurely dinner, highlighted by some dark, delicious, Palestinian beer, we made our way to the church. The church itself, the site of a 2002 standoff following an IDF incursion into the town, is quite unremarkable from the outside, despite its historic importance. Across the square lie a mosque swathed in scaffolding, as repairs are made to reverse the damage done during the aforementioned showdown.
After sticking around to gawk at the arrival of several Palestinian government officials and a handful of foreign diplomats, I made my way inside the church. The inside of the church, and the service itself, were both beautiful and fascinating. More striking, however, was the warm welcome extended by the Palestinians of Bethlehem. Several youth around my age, noticing a lone stranger, came over to say Merry Christmas and engage in some English-language conversation about life in Palestine.
One young man’s story in particular struck me. Born and raised in Bethlehem, he was currently studying law at a university in Jerusalem, with ambitions of one day practicing the profession. While the university would normally be only 15 or 20 minutes by car from his home, he is unable to take the main road, for he, being Palestinian, cannot pass through the IDF checkpoint to enter Jerusalem. Rather, he must make a long and twisted journey each day, criss-crossing several paths and various obstacles in order to make it to school without being caught by Israel’s unholy hand.
An American living in Ramallah once told me that the Palestinians have a huge thirst for education, perhaps hoping that the old adage knowledge is power may help them in their struggle. The story of this student, though only one of many trapped in such oppressive circumstances, is more than mere anecdote. He is but one manifestation of the resilience of the Palestinian people, as they continue to resist and rebel against an occupation that denies them many of life’s most basic rights, needs, and joys.