Last Christmas in Bethlehem

With its Christmas displays cancelled, Bethlehem resident Christy Anastas writes about a bleak future for its Christian Palestinian community.

Christy Anastas

Christy Anastas is a Bethlehem resident. She is a Palestinian advocate for nonviolent ways of mediating a more stable Middle East.

A church gable featuring a cross, a Madonna and angel Christmas decorations.

2017 Christmas decorations on the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Jana Humeedat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Religious minority groups, like Christians, represent about one per cent of the overall Palestinian population. We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place in this conflict. As a consequence of this war, many of us are already planning to emigrate once the opportunity arises. If this happens, Bethlehem will virtually become a non-Christian city. This would be a sad outcome given it was the birthplace of Jesus Christ and that in the early 1900s the Christian population used to be just under 85 per cent. Now Bethlehem's population is approximately five per cent Christian. After this war we fear that these statistics would decrease even more. The main source of income of the city heavily relies on tourism, with almost 70 per cent of Bethlehem’s GDP due to religious pilgrims from all over the world visiting Jesus Christ’s birthplace, especially during Christmas.

This is the first year for decades, when all Christmas festive displays have been cancelled in Bethlehem. This decision taken by Bethlehem municipality and the Palestinian church is a sobering and poignant one and comes with a financial heavy price paid by locals. Such traditions have been kept for decades, even during the second Intifada, so that between 2000 to 2005 a Christmas tree in Manager Square was still displayed each year. Even the Covid-19 pandemic did not stop Bethlehem from decorating the entire city. However, today many Palestinian Christians are not in a festive mood. The Israel-Hamas war is in its second month and has already a higher death toll than during the whole of five years of the second Intifada.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction.

In my opinion it feels fitting to stand in solidarity with those who mourn, inspired by Paul’s letter to the Romans encouraging Christians to “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn”. During such devastating circumstances of the civilians in Gaza, Palestinian Christians are heartbroken at the enormity of lives lost and the desperate conditions experienced especially by children. The desire to celebrate the birth of the most important child in Christianity’s history is dimmed by the death toll of children in Gaza during this war. An ancient biblical proverb offers a powerful depiction of what it would be like for us Christians to celebrate Christmas as usual. It would have felt “like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”

However, the announcement of the cancellation issued by the head of Bethlehem municipality, was made exclusively in honour of Palestinian “martyrs”, in Gaza and the West Bank. This disappointing statement distorts the church’s role in the region as a peace builder and the bridge amongst different communities and ethnicities. In fact, it is an utterly missed opportunity for the church to demonstration its ethics and values in the region, especially when confronted with losses of lives across all ethnicities and religions. A more inclusive nuanced statement that could have honoured the suffering of all, could have been worded along the lines of offering tributes to the devastating losses of lives in the Israel-Hamas war since the 7th of October, without any discrimination or prejudice. That old proverb continues to say, “if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The exclusivity of the statement's approach made by the churches was a lost opportunity to express a more authentic side of Christianity to the world revealed from its birthplace. It could have counteracted the way the church was portrayed in Europe during the Holocaust. It could have been the chance to respond in a less indifferent manner to the plights of the Jewish people in the region, rather than reiterate a similar stance of the European churches during World War II.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction, inspired by what our brothers and sisters in Gaza have conveyed to us in private communication. Christians in Gaza are pleading for peace and stating that as a community, they oppose violence. The zero-sum approach towards this war has made it difficult for us Christians to be true to our faith without being condemned or oppressed for it. When we call for a ceasefire, we are accused of supporting terrorism and denying Israel’s right to self-defence. However, when we want to acknowledge the suffering of the Israeli side during the 7th of October, we are deemed to be traitors. Our objective isn’t to attempt to prevent Israel from defending itself; rather, to suggest that the consequences of inflicting violence and bloodshed in retaliation could reinforce a stronger hold for violence and extremism in the region.

Therefore, most Palestinian Christians do not feel they have the freedom to stand for their beliefs and the churches in the region are not portraying the best paradigm. In my opinion, this is one of the main factors behind the drastic decline of the Christian population generally especially in Bethlehem. It is also why they no longer hold as much power as they used to in influencing the culture and mindsets in the area. Their roles became more politicised which has gradually led them to neglect standing up for truth until it has become too dangerous to even express it. This could well lead to a reality where this would be the last Christmas in Bethlehem for a majority of Christian families.

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Grenfell disaster

13 June 2023

5 min read

The legacy of Grenfell

Marking the sixth anniversary of the disaster, Graham Tomlin looks to what its legacy needs to be.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Grenfell Tower, wrapped in a protective layer bearing the legend: Grenfell forever in our hearts

The Grenfell Tower protectively wrapped.

The blowup on Unsplash.

It is now six years since an electrical fault in a fridge in the kitchen of a fourth floor flat led to the fire in Grenfell Tower which killed 72 people – the worst loss of life in one single incident in London since the second world war. The rest of the country has understandably moved on, preoccupied by the COVID years, a cost of living crisis and the sheer pace of life, so that Grenfell has retreated to the back of our consciousness and conscience, yet for the bereaved and survivors, who live with the memory every day, these have been six very long years.

We are told the Public Inquiry will report early in 2024, so there is still more time to wait. Meanwhile, the remains of the creaking tower still stand by the Westway in north Kensington.

Whenever I speak to people about Grenfell, the most common question is ‘what is going to happen to the Tower?’

Yet there is the nagging fear from bereaved families and campaigners that once it is demolished, they, and their loved ones will be forgotten: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

The Tower left to its own devices would probably have fallen long ago. A damaged building like this gradually degrades over time, with the effects of gravity, weather, water seeping into the cracks which ice up in winter, leading to widening of those cracks, concrete falls and so on. As a result, there are over 4,500 props inserted into the building, keeping the creaking infrastructure standing. A large team monitors the building constantly, and it is relatively secure for the next decade if need be, despite the ongoing cost of the operation. The Tower continues to be covered with two linings of white wrapping plastic – an inner one which remains and an outer one that is replaced every year. Some local people would want to see the building come down as it remains a constant painful memory. Yet there is the nagging fear from bereaved families and campaigners that once it is demolished, they, and their loved ones will be forgotten: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ The ongoing presence of the building, standing alone by the Westway as a constant reminder to the thousands who travel into London each day, is one of the only ways they have to keep the memory alive.

So, looking into the future, what will the legacy of Grenfell be? Convictions of those found to be culpable may well follow and rightly so, if individuals or companies can be clearly identified as having deliberately acted in underhand ways that led to the installation of the highly flammable cladding, or carelessly caused this disaster.

Some people call Grenfell a crime. Some a tragedy. Perhaps both are right. So what do you do when a crime, or a tragedy occurs? What do we do as a society?

Grenfell was not an accident. As I said in my sermon at the fifth anniversary commemoration in Westminster Abbey a year ago, Grenfell “was not an unfortunate accident – it was the result of careless decisions taken, regulations ignored, an industry that seemed at times more interested in making profits and selling products than in the precious value of human life and keeping people safe in their own homes.” In Christian language, Grenfell was the result of sin.

When you recognise you have sinned, the way to begin to put things right is to repent. ‘Repent’ is a strong word, yet it talks about turning and going in a different direction. You recognise that you have done something wrong and you need to put it right. The last six years have revealed a pattern of cutting corners, deception and lack of care in the regulation of building safety. It has also revealed flaws in our housing stock. The government’s Levelling Up Bill gives some protection to those living in insecure blocks of flats, but does not yet protect innocent leaseholders from all the costs of remedying safety faults for which they were not responsible. Some leaseholders are in the fortunate position of having their developers agreeing to foot the bill to make things safe, but others aren’t, and are still facing high insurance premiums, remediation costs and are still waiting to see who will pay, how much will be covered and when.

The Earl of Lytton’s amendment to the bill offers protection to leaseholders by ensuring those responsible for safety defects at the time of construction pay up, or if the company no longer exists. The costs are covered by an industry levy, of money raised from those who have profited from cutting corners in the past, those on whom the Public Inquiry has shone an uncomfortable light. Passing an amendment such as this, that protects vulnerable leaseholders and places the costs on those responsible for them would be a fitting way to enact repentance, to ensure Grenfell is not repeated.

With a tragedy, however, you remember. The Grenfell Memorial Commission continues to meet and work on this very task. Conversations with the community continue and the desire is for a memorial that is peaceful, reflective, positive and respectful. A design team is to be chosen in the coming 12 months, with a view to a final plan being chosen by the end of 2024. The planning process and the building of whatever form of memorial is chosen will then start in 2025, to be finished some time later.

All this will take time and a further thing required beyond repentance and remembering - patience. A visit to the 9/11 memorial in New York recently reminded me how a memorial can help process and manage the pain of remembered tragedy and trauma. The site is comprehensive, respectful, dignified and unforgettable. The 9/11 memorial opened 10 years after the attacks, and the Museum, offering a detailed moment by moment account of the day and what led up to it, opened in 2014, 13 years after the event.

Remembering and repentance takes time and need to be done well. Repentance needs to be thoroughly thought through and enacted wisely. Remembering needs to emerge from deep reflection on what has happened and finding creative ways to being something positive and even beautiful out of tragedy. Neither need to be hurried, otherwise they will be done in a shoddy and off-hand way, which disrespects the memory of those who died.

For many, Grenfell may have dropped out of public consciousness. Yet societies, like people, are defined by the way they learn from mistakes and tragedies. Comprehensive building safety legislation and a dignified memorial that keeps the memory of Grenfell and those who died there alive for years to come will be the best legacy for Grenfell, even though it will take time. We are not there yet, but that future is worth waiting for.