Hopes And Fears of All the Years

By Richard N. Ostling

Thanks to its renown as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, Bethlehem has long since ceased to be the "little town" described in the popular carol. It is instead a city whose 35,000 residents have traditionally been joined by so many pilgrims and tourists that there is often no room in the inns. But the boom and bustle came to a rather sudden halt in December 1987, when the intifadeh arose among the Arabs in Israel's occupied territories. Last Christmas only 5,000 visitors -- half the normal turnout -- attended Bethlehem's elaborate holiday observance. In the year since then, an estimated 300 Palestinian Arabs have been killed in the uprising, eleven in the Bethlehem area.

Last week a decree went out from the Bethlehem city council that will make Christmas 1988 the gloomiest yet. To express solidarity with the Arab cause, the leaders ordered historic Manger Square to be bare of the usual tinsel and twinkling lights. The city is also canceling the annual Boy Scout parade and its reception for visiting dignitaries. Moreover, many citizens say they are too dispirited this year to hold their customary family celebrations. The new Latin patriarch Michel Sabbah, a pointed critic of Israel's policy toward Arab residents, will still lead the centuries-old procession across the square for midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity. But, all in all, says Roman Catholic Deputy Mayor Hanna Nasser, "it is a very sad Christmas."

The sadness extends from Bethlehem to nearby Jerusalem and many West Bank towns, where Christians, who are overwhelmingly Arabs, say they too will be forgoing glittering displays and traditional festivities. Most of the country's Christian leaders see no end to the intifadeh. They fear that their flocks, already reduced by a century of emigration to the West, could gradually decline into virtual extinction, as has already happened to the once grand Greek Orthodox community in Muslim Turkey.

As prospects for peace inside and outside Israel falter, rumors fly in Christian neighborhoods about people seeking visas to move to North and South America. Since Christians are a minority, says the Greek Catholic patriarchal vicar in Jerusalem, Archbishop Loutfi Laham, they "need stabilization and peace in order to stay here." For the moment, at least, the fears of a disappearing flock appear exaggerated, judging by estimates from Israeli sources. They show that there are 103,000 Christians in Israel, including the Jerusalem area, compared with only 67,000 in 1967. During the same period, the total number of believers in the occupied West Bank has held steady at around 30,000.

Despite such statistics, Christians have already become a minority in places where they traditionally predominated. Bethlehem, for instance, a Christian stronghold from the very earliest days of the faith, now has a Muslim majority as a result of high Islamic birthrates and an influx from refugee camps. The growing influence of Israel's Orthodox Jewish political movements adds to anxieties. Says Bethlehem's Nasser: "Jewish and Arab fundamentalism are the same. They are like sisters, and we fear the sisters are going to clash, and we will be caught in the middle."

With reporting by Ginni Walsh/Jerusalem