Bitterness Fills Bethlehem’s Empty Shops and Streets

BETHLEHEM, West Bank —  On the 28th day of an Israeli military closure, Palestinian vendors sat idle and angry Tuesday in the shade of Manger Square while soldiers turned away tourist buses at checkpoints surrounding this Palestinian-ruled city.

Teachers and children, shut into their villages, missed the third day of school in Bethlehem. And Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers under a cloud of tear gas at the city’s edge as Mayor Hanna Nasser railed against what he called the worst Israeli “siege” of Bethlehem in his quarter-century of public service.

“This city has never seen such a hard and tough closure and siege around Bethlehem. We are completely isolated,” Nasser said.

Israel closed off the West Bank on July 30 after two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Jerusalem market, killing 14 other people. Afterward, a leaflet claimed that the Islamic extremist group Hamas was responsible for the bombing.

The Israeli government has gradually relaxed the internal closure between other Palestinian cities and villages but keeps a tight seal on the Bethlehem area, alleging that military cells of Hamas and other extremist groups are operating freely here.

In empty shops, bitterness welled. Palestinians insisted that the closure is not a security measure but economic pressure and revenge for the bombings.

Bethlehem normally sees about 60 to 70 tour buses a day. That had come to a halt until Tuesday, when a Roman Catholic cardinal managed to wangle an exception for several hundred Italian tourists who came to celebrate Mass.

George Barboul shouted a hello in Italian to a group of them but failed to entice anyone into his gift shop.