In Bethlehem, it's Christmas in mourning amid the ongoing Gaza war

The normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus looks like a ghost town on Christmas Eve, with celebrations in Bethlehem, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called off as the war in Gaza continues.

The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square are missing, as are the throngs of foreign tourists who normally gather each year for the holiday. 

"It's a very sad Christmas. People are watching the news, they have friends and family members in Gaza," Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian theologian and former pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, told CBC's Day 6.

"When they look and see the genocide taking place there, they are not up for celebrations and also they are angry that the world cannot even agree on a ceasefire."

This year, the usual nativity scene in Manger Square — featuring baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and farm animals — is placed amid rubble and razor wire. This scene, Raheb said, is inspired by images and videos of people being pulled from the rubble in Gaza. 

Most years Bethlehem basks in the central place it holds in the Christian story of Jesus' life, born there in a stable because there was no room for his parents at the inn, and placed in an animal's manger, the humblest of all possible beds.

Some 2,000 years later, pilgrims usually flock to the reputed location of that stable in Bethlehem's Byzantine-era Church of the Nativity, where most Christmases there are joyful displays of lights and trees in Manger Square.

But with Israel's campaign in Gaza having killed more than 20,000 people, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, the mostly Palestinian population of Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank are in mourning too.

Christians make up around two per cent of the population across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories and have a smaller proportion in Gaza, according to Protecting Holy Land Christians, a campaign organized by the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the war, triggered by a Hamas attack on Israeli towns on Oct. 7 that Israel says killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, has kept away the majority of expected foreign tourists hoping to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem.

In the lead-up to Christmas, Pope Francis condemned the ongoing killing in Gaza and suggested Israel was using "terrorism" tactics in the region. 

According to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "sniper" killed two women earlier this month, whom the pope named as Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar, as they walked to a convent of nuns in the compound of the Holy Family Parish.

The Patriarchate statement said seven other people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others.

"I continue to receive very grave and painful news from Gaza," Pope Francis said on Dec. 17. "Unarmed civilians are the objects of bombings and shootings. And this happened even inside the Holy Family parish complex, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick or disabled, nuns."