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A network of trenches, barbed-wire fences, walls, and military checkpoints is closing off the holy city of Bethlehem. The siege is becoming harsher every day.

"It is choking the Christian community," says the Rev. Alex Awad, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College. "There is utter depression here."

On many days, the Church of the Nativity—once crowded with tourists and worshippers—is strangely quiet, as only a handful of people visit. The city was refurbished with tens of millions of dollars in renovations in the hopeful years leading up to the millennium, but now windows and streets are grimy, shops are shuttered, and hotels stand empty.

The unemployment rate in Bethlehem is 65 percent, and Awad has heard that as many as 500 Christian families left the town in the last six months.

The Rev. Mitri Raheb, senior pastor at Christmas Lutheran Church, says Bethlehem's isolation has been growing for over three years. "As a pastor, I'm talking to many families where the husband and the wife are fighting, because the man is unemployed," he says. "Children are fighting, neighbors are fighting, brothers are fighting, sisters. You have this overload."

Divided by Fear
The Israeli plan is to build 30 miles of fences and walls around Bethlehem, and to post red signs that warn, in three languages: "MORTAL DANGER—MILITARY ZONE. Any person who passes or damages the fence ENDANGERS HIS LIFE."

"There will be just to the east [of Bethlehem] a small opening. They are working day and night, 22 hours a day," Raheb says. About ten miles of the barrier are already complete, and military outposts and Jewish settlements control other normal entry points.

The entire community is suffering from unprecedented Israeli security restrictions that have become a permanent part of daily life, but the outside world is in danger of losing access to something precious, too, Awad says. Even what was once a ten-minute drive from Jerusalem can now be a fruitless ordeal for pilgrims, clergy, and others who must also wait in line at checkpoints, where entry is sometimes refused. "It's like coming to register for college in a jail," Awad says of prospective students.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces says the fence system is being built solely "to prevent the passing of terrorists to Jerusalem." She lists suicide attacks in which bombers had come from the Bethlehem area: April 12, 2002, six Israelis killed; May 2, 2002, ten Israelis killed; November 29, 2002, eleven Israelis killed; January 29, 2003, eleven Israelis killed; and February 22, 2004, eight Israelis killed.

The final route of the fence is being continually updated, the Army source says, and there is no firm estimate for when construction in the Bethlehem region is scheduled for completion. Some Israeli officials say all debates about the fence must start with the issue of unrelenting terrorist attacks.

Israel says over 900 people have died from suicide attacks since September of 2000. Israeli officials cite a sharp drop in deadly suicide attacks in areas where the fence has been completed, and public opinion in Israel has strongly supported the barrier. Construction of the fence began in the spring of 2002.

"If not for Palestinian terrorism, we would not need the fence in the first place," Uzi Landau, a Knesset member and former minister of internal security, said last December.

Addressing the hardships the fence causes Palestinians, an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement notes that for victims of suicide bombings, "Death is permanent. It is irreversible. The inconvenience caused to Palestinians ... is temporary and reversible, once terrorism stops and peace is achieved."

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May 2004, Vol. 48, No. 5