SO GREAT has been the recent expansion of Jewish settlements around the little Palestinian hamlet of Beit Skaria, on the south-western edge of Bethlehem, that it is now completely surrounded. To reach its pretty hilltop you have to drive through the sprawling settlement of Gush Etzion, one of the largest of Jewish settlement blocs on the West Bank, close to the 1967 border. One crop of settlements after another has now been built on the land of the Beit Skaria villagers, who are banned by the army from putting up any new buildings themselves. When they need to renovate their dilapidated homes, they smuggle in building material in their car boots. For the people of Bethlehem up the road, Beit Skaria is a bleak example of what might yet happen to them. On all sides, Bethlehem is also being surrounded by settler bypass roads and by concrete walls higher than those that divided Berlin in the cold war. Earlier this month, Israel’s defence ministry confiscated the largest chunk of private Palestinian land in years on Bethlehem’s southern fringe to let smaller settlements, previously unauthorised by the Israeli government, expand. The population of Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement to the west of Bethlehem, in the Gush Etzion bloc, is set to grow from around 45,000 to 100,000 in the next six years.

With little land left for new inns, Bethlehem’s land prices have soared. The boom in building hotels for Christian pilgrims has slowed, as hoteliers scour for new land. Thanks to foreign pressure, Sami Abu Daya, a Palestinian hotelier, got Israeli permission in principle to build what he says will be the first Palestinian hotel in Area C, the rural 62% of the West Bank administered solely by the Israelis. But his request to build a plush hotel complex on a hill just outside Bethlehem’s municipal confines has yet to receive the go-ahead from the plethora of Israeli committees.

Farther south, a Turkish firm has offered to finance a hotel project aimed at Muslims returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca. It would be the largest such complex in the Holy Land. But it is on hold, too, says its developer, because Israel is loth to issue permits. Bethlehem’s authorities have built a modern landfill to cater for an increase in rubbish. But the Palestinians say the Israelis will not let the site operate unless it treats the new Jewish settlements’ garbage as well.