The coronavirus ruins another Christmas in Bethlehem

The coronavirus pandemic continues and continues to affect life and business around the world. An example of this is what happens in Bethlehem this year.

After spending two years empty, the 228 rooms of the Hotel Ararat in Bethlehem were ready to receive tourists, but the coronavirus once again ruined hopes of a normal Christmas in the city where Jesus was born.

Fir with golden baubles and a figure of Santa Claus decorate the grand marble lobby, but the property’s reception is deserted.

Here, as in other hotels in Bethlehem – a Palestinian city in the West Bank – those responsible do not even bother to open their doors. The decorations are only to cheer up the few employees who were not laid off.

Bethlehem residents thought they had turned the sinister coronavirus page after a gloomy Christmas last year, the first of the COVID-19 era.

As of November 1, tourists and pilgrims had been able to return to Bethlehem after Israel, whose army has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and controls all entrances to that Palestinian territory, opened its doors to vaccinated visitors.

But less than a month later, when businesses had placed their orders to replenish their stocks and hotels were ready again, the country closed the borders again after the confirmation of an omicron case.

Since then, Agustín Shomali, director of the Ararat hotel, checks “every day the information regarding the Tel Aviv airport” awaiting its reopening to tourists, the only possible salvation for his establishment located a few minutes from the Basilica of the Nativity, place of Jesus’ birth according to Christian tradition.

Learn to live with the virus

“The hotel’s occupancy rate was supposed to be 70% by Christmas, but all reservations from abroad were canceled,” explains Shomali. We will have to be content with local tourism, but “it will not exceed 5%”, he says.

This year, like the previous one, the rooster mass will be reserved for a restricted circle of people invited by the Church, and who must wear a mask.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, more than three million people visited Bethlehem on average each year.

This city, where the unemployment rate went from 23% to 35% in two years, has been affected by the health crisis like no other in the West Bank since it depends exclusively on tourism, says Carmen Ghattas, director of public relations at the city council.

From his office in Manger Square, where a life-size manger was installed at the foot of a gigantic fir tree, he regrets that he has no control over the entry of tourists to his city, where most of the inhabitants are vaccinated.

In other parts of the world, tourist spots are open to vaccinated visitors if they respect sanitary regulations, Ghattas says. “Here, tourists are simply banned from entering and that is affecting our economy. It is necessary that they open (the airport) because the coronavirus is not going to disappear, you have to learn to live with it, “he says.

Aware of the difficulties, and in the form of compensation, the Palestinian government donated 700 shekels (less than $ 226) to the merchants who applied. “A drop of water,” according to Ghattas.

A stone’s throw from the town hall, Afram Chahine smokes a cigarette at the entrance to his ceramic shop. In two years it sold for the equivalent of 20 euros ($ 22.5).

“Before the pandemic, 20 euros represented the price of my cigarettes every day. Only bakeries, pharmacies and grocery stores were saved, ”he laments. (I)