says Jesus was born, to observe Christmas Eve, but concerns over an exodus of Christians leaving the area overshadowed the celebrations.
Bethlehem’s recently elected mayor, Dr. Victor Batarseh, a staunch Catholic, said violence forced people to leave the city.
"Due to the stress, either physical or psychological, and the bad economic situation, many people are emigrating, either Christians or Muslims, but it is more apparent among Christians, because they already are a minority," he told the Voice Of America (VOA)
network.
"It is because it is easier for a Christian family to emigrate, because they have family abroad already, in the US in South or Central America, or Australia, or Canada," he added. "We need this city to remain as a model of co-existence between the two religions. The more emigration we get this model will dissolve," he warned.
Over 3,000 Christians, or about 10 percent of Bethlehem’s Christian population, are estimated to have left the city since the Palestinian uprising began five years ago.
MORE MUSLIMS
Until the middle of the 20th Century Bethlehem was about 90 percent Christian, but now
Muslims outnumber Christians, who make up about 35 percent of Bethlehem’s 60,000 residents, experts say.
Late Saturday, December 24, the Christians who came passed the military checkpoint and a massive wall Israel has built. Israel claims the barrier is aimed at keeping Palestinian suicide bombers out of the country, while Palestinians say that Israel
has locked them "in a big prison."
The estimated hundreds of pilgrims who arrived for a mass at the Church of the Nativity were a far cry from a few years ago, when late Pope John Paul II held a Christmas Eve mass there for tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from the West Bank and Israel).
