Bethlehem | Omicron has ruined hopes for a normal Christmas

(Bethlehem) After spending two years in the dust, the 228 rooms of the Ararat hotel in Bethlehem have just been thoroughly cleaned for Christmas. But for nothing! Because once again this year, the coronavirus is playing the spoiler in the city of birth of Jesus.

The large Christmas tree with golden balls and the Santa Claus figurine give a little warmth to the large marble hall, where the reception of the establishment is deserted.

Here, as in the other hotels in the Palestinian city of the occupied West Bank, people no longer even bother to open. The decorations are only there to put a little balm in the hearts of the few employees who have not been fired.

However, Bethlehem residents believed they had turned the grim page of the coronavirus after a gloomy Christmas last year, the first in the era of COVID-19.

From 1^er November, tourists and pilgrims were able to return to Bethlehem after Israel, whose army has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and controls all entrances to this Palestinian territory, reopened its doors to vaccinated visitors.

But less than a month later, with businesses ordering to replenish their stocks and hotels getting a facelift, the country had to seal itself in again after a case of Omicron was confirmed.

Since then, Agustin Shomali, a manager of the Ararat hotel, checks “every day the information concerning the Tel Aviv airport” in the hope that it will reopen to tourists, the only possible salvation for his establishment located a few minutes from the Basilica of the Nativity, the birthplace of Jesus according to Christian tradition.

“The hotel’s occupancy rate was supposed to be 70% for Christmas, but all overseas reservations were canceled,” says Shomali. It will be necessary to be satisfied with local tourism, but “it will not exceed 5%”.

This year like last year, the midnight mass will be reserved for a small circle of people invited by the Church, who will have to wear a mask.

” To live with “

Before the coronavirus pandemic, more than three million people visited Bethlehem on average each year.

This city, where the unemployment rate has fallen from 23 to 35% in two years, has been affected by the health crisis like no other in the West Bank, because it depends exclusively on tourism, notes Carmen Ghattas, director of public relations at the town hall. .

From her office which overlooks the Place de la Mangeoire, where a life-size crèche has been set up at the foot of a gigantic tree, she laments that she has no control over the entry of tourists into her city, where the majority of inhabitants are vaccinated.

Elsewhere in the world, tourist places are open to vaccinated visitors if they comply with health rules, note M^me Ghattas.

“Tourists here haven’t even had that chance, they’ve just been banned from entering and it’s affecting our economy. They have to open (the airport), because the coronavirus will not go away, you have to learn to live with it, ”she said.

As compensation, the Palestinian government gave 700 shekels ($ 288) to the traders who requested it. But^me Ghattas recognizes that it is a drop of water.

Twenty euros in two years

A stone’s throw from the town hall, Afram Chahine smokes cigarettes at the entrance of his shop which is full of ceramics of all colors. In two years, he sold for the equivalent of 20 euros ($ 29).

“Before the pandemic, 20 euros was pocket money for me, the price of my cigarettes every day! He says. “Only bakeries, pharmacies and grocery stores have been spared. “

Her neighbor, Nadia Hazboun, sells olive wood icons and nativity scenes.

She says she is “destroyed” by the pandemic.

“We are lower than zero,” blows this Palestinian woman, melancholy at the memory of the days when her city was crowded with people and her store closed late at night.

Agustin Shomali hopes to find by Easter the merry hubbub in the lobby of his hotel.

“The only thing that keeps us alive is hope. Since the first day, I say to my wife “it will pass, it will pass” ”.