Going to Sunday mass in Bethlehem is entering a time tunnel. There is no room for a pin in the temple of Santa Catalina. The pews are full and many Palestinian Catholics are still standing during the ceremony held in Arabic, of course, like the songs that echo in the church while several Franciscan monks administer the hosts to the faithful who take communion – almost all of them – in several and endless rows. There are not only older people, but many young couples with children dressed in their best clothes. Sunday. Like anywhere, some children cry, others get bored and those who can escape and run between people's legs in this temple located next to the place where Jesus was born.
In the adjacent Basilica of the Nativity, a man with a small cross around his neck walks through various images of the temple with a small piece of paper in his hand: he unfolds it, looks at it, prays and looks for another icon in the Orthodox nave. His name is Bassem Jaraiseh and he explains to La Vanguardia that on the paper are the names of Palestinian friends who live outside Bethlehem, or even in Israel, who cannot come as they usually did due to the complications generated by the Gaza war. Greater controls on the Arab population and all access to the Bethlehem area and surrounding towns closed except one, with the consequent traffic problems. Jaraiseh's friends ask him to pray for them.
Bassem goes to mass every Sunday with his children and his wife, Julia María Abedrabbo, who was born in Ecuador and arrived in Palestine with her parents when she was twelve years old. “We can at least eat, not like the people of Gaza,” says Julia María when we ask her about this bitter Christmas. The woman appears very sorry for what is happening on the strip, like many of the acquaintances who come to greet them when they arrive at the Santa Catalina cloister.
The Bethlehem City Council has suspended the celebrations and the town will not turn on Christmas lights this year. “Bethlehem, like any other Palestinian city, is in mourning and sad,” the city's outgoing mayor, Hanna Hanaia, said a few days ago.
For their part, the patriarchs of the various Christian denominations of Jerusalem also announced, in a joint statement, that they renounce “any unnecessarily festive activities” in order to remain firm with those who face afflictions this year.
In the Portal of Bethlehem three Catholic missionary nuns pray in silence before the altar of the Three Wise Men, while the faithful kneel in front of the exact place where Christian tradition says that Jesus Christ was born. Some people put half their body into the small grotto, kiss the fourteen-pointed silver star, put their hand into the hole to touch the stone or dip their fingers in the blessed oil from the lamps. Without tourists, there are impossible moments – if it weren't for the war – when one can be left alone in the Nativity Grotto.
The three nuns are Argentine and belong to the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará. Their names are Mary of the Holy Face, Mary of Jerusalem and Mary of Heaven, who is the provincial of the order and who remembers that she already lived here "one Christmas in the middle of the war at the time of the intifada", when the conflict broke out. focused on the West Bank, but especially in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The nuns maintain a hospice near the basilica that now houses 36 intellectually and physically disabled children, most of whom come from Muslim families.
“This Christmas will be more sober in the external celebrations because we must focus on accompanying so many people who are suffering from the consequences of the war,” says María del Cielo, who explains that the great attendance of Catholics at mass on Sunday in Bethlehem “ It is the way people have to emphasize Christian identity in front of a Muslim majority.”
The provincial also says that due to the war, Palestinians who do not have Israeli citizenship cannot travel to Israel due to the prohibition by Beniamin Netanyahu's government, which means a worsening of the economic situation. “Many families suffer, there are thousands of Palestinians who have not had a job for two months because they cannot go to Jerusalem,” she says.
And he explains that an Egyptian priest and two Peruvian sisters from his congregation are in Gaza. The nuns are twin sisters who rejected the Peruvian government's offer to repatriate them and remain in the Holy Family church in Gaza City, the only Catholic parish in the strip, where 600 Christians are taking refuge from the bombings.
María del Cielo makes a face of resignation and adds: “Every day the sisters write us a message saying: 'we spent another night.' "It's like thanking God for another night, because at any moment the conflict could cause a missile to fall."
