by Louise Mason

After worship at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, a middle-aged man explained to me that he has lived in Bethlehem all his life and that his heritage is very important to him.

While at one time Bethlehem had a much larger Christian population, only a remnant remains now because so many families and young people have migrated to countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia. Even so, the Bethlehem area still has the largest concentration of Christians in the Palestinian Territories. This man travels regularly to the USA to see his son and daughter, both of whom went there to study, but have now settled there and are raising families.

He was not sure how much longer he would be able to sustain the travel because there are huge challenges associated with leaving the West Bank. Palestinians cannot use the airport at Tel Aviv in Israel. They must fly out of Amman in Jordan. This involves organising complex paperwork and then progressing through six border crossings and control points. Even then there is absolutely no guarantee that they will be able to progress through each control. Travel is difficult for Palestinians.

Rich family life

Over coffee I met another ‘original’ resident of Bethlehem. He was retired but active in the arts program at the (Lutheran) International Centre in Bethlehem. He was working as a photographer, painter and calligrapher (Arabic script) on a commission basis. He showed me a book he had just published, all entirely ‘handmade’ with absolutely beautiful script and adornment.

The women at the church had all worked on a project where they wrote their life stories and these were the subject of the book. Each story was accompanied by a carefully chosen photograph. The photographer’s wife showed me a board full of photographs of church families. Each photo revealed rich family life: people eating, celebrating, singing, laughing and enjoying one another’s company. I felt honoured to be ‘invited’ in to these special times that I was viewing.

Restrictions

Politics and history were the subjects of my conversation with a man whose whole family has USA passports but who chooses to remain in Bethlehem because it is his home. He explained that while restrictions on Palestinians might seem tight now, they are more relaxed than they were from 1998 to 2004. Then Palestinians could not travel from one town to another by car, only by public transport. But even now, residents of the West Bank cannot go to Gaza, and vice versa.

Read the rest of the story in the May 2011 edition, available from LCA Subscriptions