O Little Town

Zaid Jilani explains the plight of Bethlehem:

Palestinian Christians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, are living under an occupation that is squeezing the city’s only hope for economic recovery tourism.

The Israeli “security fence” a sometimes 8-meter tall barrier that contains guard towers and barbed-wire fortifications that the World Court has ruled is illegal cuts deep into the Palestinian city, and severely restricts travel and supplies. The United Nations estimates that between 50 to 70 percent of the agricultural land used by the citizens of Bethlehem has been confiscated by the building of Israel’s fence and settlement expansion. As a result of the occupation, fewer than 30 percent of visitors choose to spend the night there. ”When tourists see the wall, they think they are going into a war zone,” Adnan Suboh, a souvenir shop owner told the press. ”They are afraid.”

But this is paradise compared with the plight of Christians in US occupied Iraq.