Bethlehem’s Christians face another bleak Easter

As Holy Week approaches, Bethlehem’s Christian community is facing another season of shuttered shops, canceled pilgrimages and deepening fear that the city’s tourism economy may not recover anytime soon.

The immediate collapse traces back to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza and sent shock waves through travel across the Holy Land. Now, local business owners say the wider regional war involving Iran and the resulting flight disruptions have pushed Bethlehem even closer to the edge. Reuters and Religion News Service both reported that tourism, the city’s economic lifeblood, has been devastated as visitors stay away.

“The tourism industry in Bethlehem is basically dead,” Elias Hazin, co-owner of Bethlehem Star Tours & Travel on Manger Square, told RNS. Hazin said almost every tourist hotel, restaurant and souvenir shop is now closed. “If the residents who depend on tourism for their livelihood are unemployed, (that) affects everyone else in the community,” he said. “The truth is that people are only buying the necessities to keep them going as long as possible.”

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The economic damage is severe. CNEWA reported unemployment in Bethlehem had climbed to 31% and the city was losing about $2.5 million a day in tourism revenue. Former Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman told RNS that more than half of the area’s 30,000 Christians work in tourism, a sector that has traditionally accounted for 70% of the local economy.

The crisis lands hard on a community that has already been shrinking for decades. Reuters reported that Christians made up about 85% of Bethlehem’s population in 1947, but only about 10% by the 2017 census. A recent Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs study said Christian families have been leaving because of socio-economic hardship, instability, and what it described as discrimination and harassment by Muslim Palestinians and the Islam-dominated Palestinian Authority.

It’s not known how many more weeks the war with Iran will last. One positive note is that Israel recovers amazingly fast from conflict. Tours resumed last fall within days of Israel reaching an agreement with Hamas. So, too, do observers say the impact of the war with Iran will end. A source within the Israel Ministry of Tourism told Metro Voice that very few of the hundreds of scheduled tours planned for the fall and winter of 2026 have been canceled rescheduled. “There’s optimism,” they stated.

That’s good news for Bethlehem, because it can only be visited by visiting Israel. In the meantime, Hazin says Christians abroad can help Holy Land believers endure by supporting local artisans and new job-creating ventures. “We are not asking for charity,” he said. “We are asking them to protect the Christians who remain.”

Readers who want to help can support Bethlehem’s struggling Christian economy by purchasing handmade olive-wood carvings and other goods through Bethlehem Star Store, which is tied to the Bethlehem Star network, or through Bethlehem Fair Trade Artisans, a nonprofit that says it supports local craftspeople in Bethlehem. Other Holy Land artisan marketplaces, including Bethlehem Crafts and Treasures of the Holy Land, also market products as a way to support Christian families in the region.

–Metro Voice