Bittersweet Christmas celebrations in Middle East

Dozens of Palestinians and tourists flocked to Bethlehem’s Manger Square near the Church of the Nativity, where celebrations will culminate with a midnight mass at the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.

Some snapped selfies near the square’s giant Christmas tree and watched the annual Scouts parade in the city, a short drive from occupied Jerusalem.

“It feels pretty awesome,” said Valeria, a 21-year-old from the US state of Wisconsin.

“This is my first Christmas away from home... but this is really amazing to be in Bethlehem.”

Despite ongoing violence in the occupied West Bank, as tensions between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinians increase, Bethlehem hotels booked up, many in the city were optimistic that this year’s holiday season would bring more visitors.

Meanwhile, members of Aleppo’s Catholic minority were preparing for the first Christmas mass in five years at the Saint Elias Cathedral in the Old City.

The famed cathedral’s roof collapsed years ago under a salvo of rocket fire, but this week members of the community were clearing out debris to prepare for the service.

“All our memories are here - this is where we celebrated all our feast days, our joys,” said Bashir Badawi, rummaging through rubble for wood and scrap metal to make a crude Nativity scene.

“We want to transform all this destruction into something beautiful.”

And in Iraq, a few hundred Iraqi Christians flocked on Saturday to Bartella, a northern town recently retaken from Daesh, to celebrate Christmas for the first time since 2013.

Bartella, once home to thousands of Assyrian Christians, emptied in August 2014 when it fell to Daesh’s blitz across large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria. Iraqi forces took it back in the first few days of the US-backed offensive that started in October.

“It is a mix of sadness and happiness,” said Bishop Mussa Shemali before a Christmas eve ceremony at Mar Shimoni church, which has been badly damaged, with crosses taken down and statues of saints defaced.

“We are sad to see what has been done to our holiest places, but at the same time we are happy to celebrate the first mass in two years.”

The region of Nineveh is one of the most ancient settlements of Christianity, going back nearly 2,000 years.

The region’s Christians were given an ultimatum: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdish region, across the Zab river, to the east.

It will be some time before people can return to the town which remains without basic services, and many buildings still bear the scars of the fighting.

“This is the best day of my life. Sometimes I thought it would never come,” said Shrook Tawfiq, a 52-year-old housewife displaced to the nearby Kurdish city of Arbil.

The front line in the battle to retake Mosul — Daesh’s last major stronghold in Iraq — has moved a few kilometres to the west, into eastern districts where the militants are dug in among civilians, fighting off the advance of elite Iraqi units with suicide car bombs, mortars and snipers.

More than one million people are estimated to live in areas of the city that remain under militant control, complicating the war plans of the Iraqi army and the US-led coalition providing air and ground support.

source: GULF NEWS