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O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

Happy Christmas, O prisoners of the Little Town of Bethlehem.

While carving the turkey for your family and merrily quaffing mulled wine ‘midst happy laughter, remember that the romantic Little Town of Bethlehem at the center of our childhood Christmases is now “an immense prison” in the words of Michel Sabbah, former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and entirely surrounded by Israel’s ugly 8-meter separation wall bristling with machine-gun towers.

The good citizens of Bethlehem are cut off from their capital Jerusalem, only six miles away, and the rest of the West Bank... and the whole world.

Consider that the United Nations, for obvious reasons, designated Jerusalem and Bethlehem a protected international zone under UN administration. Israeli rule was not to be permitted.

Consider also that when Palestine was under British mandate Christians accounted for 78 percent of the population in Bethlehem and how 71 years of Israeli terror, illegal occupation, dispossession, interference and economic wrecking tactics have whittled their numbers down to around 15 percent. In occupied Palestine overall the figure is down to 2 percent.

Consider that, at this rate, there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was born… thanks to the cowardice and inaction of our political leaders.

And how do the 26 bishops loafing around in our House of Lords explain that to their dwindling congregations?

As usual, many Palestinians in Bethlehem and the other cities and villages throughout occupied Palestine will be unable to reunite with their families or celebrate Christmas at their holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem due to cruel Israeli-imposed travel restrictions. Imagine for a moment what sort of Christmas the half-starved children in blockaded Gaza are having this year, and every year… and the dismal New Year prospects that face all the other Palestinian children struggling to grow up with the Israeli army’s boot on their necks.

This year Reuters reported that Christians in the Gaza Strip would not be allowed to visit holy cities such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem to celebrate Christmas.

Israel grants Gaza’s Christians permits to travel abroad but not to the rest of their homeland in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where many of their holy sites are located. I’ve seen one report today that the decision has been suddenly reversed after pleadings by Christian leaders, but no confirmations so far. Of course, it should not be necessary to plead in such matters.

Nor is it just about religion. This is also a struggle between justice and a criminal conspiracy of huge international proportions, the tentacles of which spread far beyond the Holy Land and impact on all of us, even here in the deepest recesses of Britain’s green and pleasant land.

Our politicians are either paralyzed or deliberately obstructive, or complicit in Israel’s thuggery. In the New Year civil society must resolve to DO SOMETHING about it, one way or another, before the evil spins irreversibly out of control.

*(Top image credit: Jaap Stronks/ Flickr)