Great News for Palestine Tourism: Bethlehem hotels booked for Christmas

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Palestinian Tourism Minister Rula Maaya said all Bethlehem hotels were fully booked, and the city hosts an “astounding” 10,000 tourists overnight on Monday night.

Palestinian Tourism Minister Rula Maaya said all Bethlehem hotels were fully booked, and the city hosts an “astounding” 10,000 tourists overnight on Monday night.

Pilgrims from around the world flocked to Bethlehem on Monday for what was believed to be the biblical West Bank city’s largest Christmas celebrations in years.

“We haven’t seen numbers like this in years,” she said, adding that the 3 million visitors to Bethlehem this year exceeded last year’s count by hundreds of thousands.

Solemn-faced nuns and enthused tourists crossed themselves and bowed over their rosaries as they entered the church, the air thick with incense.

Hundreds of locals and foreign visitors milled in Manger Square as bagpipe-playing Palestinian Scouts paraded past a giant Christmas tree. Crowds flooded the Church of the Nativity, venerated as the traditional site of Jesus’s birth, and waited to descend into the ancient grotto.

“It’s wild to be in the place it all began,” a German visitor said, sipping Turkish coffee in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus.

The Christmas festivities traditionally bring a boost of holiday cheer to Christians in the Holy Land, whose numbers have shrunk over the decades relative to the general population and now make up just a minority.

Choirs sang classic carols and hymns, their voices echoing throughout the plaza.

Palestinian youths peddled Santa hats to tourists and shop windows bearing signs reading “Jesus Is Here” displayed olivewood Nativity scenes and other souvenirs.

Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, entered Bethlehem after crossing an Israeli military checkpoint from Jerusalem.

At a midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity, Pizzaballa addressed a packed house of worshippers and dignitaries that included Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

“This last year was terrible,” said Pizzaballa, referring to the upsurge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians, “so we all tend to think that all is dirty.

But if you remove this layer of dirt we see how wonderful the mosaics are.” “Since it’s Christmas, we have to be positive,” the archbishop said.

Palestine is safe for tourism. This was always echoed over the years and remained a fact despite ongoing tensions

About the author

Avatar of Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen T Steinmetz

Juergen Thomas Steinmetz has continuously worked in the travel and tourism industry since he was a teenager in Germany (1977).
He founded eTurboNews in 1999 as the first online newsletter for the global travel tourism industry.

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