More than two billion Christians around the world will remember Bethlehem in their prayers and carols this Christmas but in the modern West Bank city the centuries-old Christian population is dwindling and afraid.
While there is a giant tree and twinkling lights in Manger Square, the celebrations around the 6th-century Church of the Nativity, the site of Jesus’s birth two millennia ago, are being observed by a diminishing number of tourists and locals.
The city’s Christian population has dropped from 84 per cent of the total a century ago to about 20 per cent today, and is falling further in the face of discrimination and threats from elements of the Muslim majority.
