The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the foreign tourists who gather each year to mark the holiday.

The normally bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town on Sunday, as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war.

The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists and jubilant youth marching bands that gather in the West Bank town each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the empty square.

“This year, without the Christmas tree and without lights, there’s just darkness,” said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.

He said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering, as he gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the thousands of children killed in the fighting in Gaza. Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the square during the Christmas season.

  • chakan2@lemmy.worldEnglish
    57·
    10 months ago

    So what exactly is your proposed solution? Do we create a terrorist state (look up hamas approval rates before you dismiss that statement) or let Israel complete it’s genocide?

    There’s not a solution to this problem and there never will be.

    But how should we solve it…humor me.

    • SPRUNT@lemmy.worldEnglish
      43·
      10 months ago

      In nearly half a century on this planet, I’ve been seeing this same war going on. Sometimes blatantly, like now, and sometimes through terrorist attacks coming from either side. AFAIC, they can fight until they glass the entire region and none of them are left. There will never be a solution as long as religion exists in the world.

    • neeshie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I mean ideally you could work towards a single secular state, that way you don’t have Hamas in power and Israel doesn’t get to commit genocide.

      Unfortunately the power here is held by Israel, and there’s a 0 percent chance they would willingly give up their ethnostate and live in peace with Palestinians unless they were forced to.

      • chakan2@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        10 months ago

        Even a secular single state won’t fix the outright hatred between Islam and Judaism. It’d just be two tribes killing each other under the same flag.

        You have to fix that root hatred, and I don’t think you can without some sort of religious persecution.

        I stand by my statement. It’s a childish conflict that will never end.