{"id":54036,"date":"2025-12-07T02:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T02:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/54036\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T02:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T02:09:13","slug":"christmas-lights-return-to-bethlehem-amid-fragile-ceasefire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/54036\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas lights return to Bethlehem amid fragile ceasefire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A giant Christmas tree adorned with red and gold baubles stands in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem for the first time since the start of Israel&#8217;s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>The Palestinian city, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, had refrained from public Christmas celebrations over the past two years.<\/p>\n<p>But as a precarious ceasefire in Gaza enters its second month, the city held a ceremony on Saturday night, lighting up the 20-metre tree at the edge of Manger Square.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of Palestinians from across the West Bank and\u00a0Israel\u00a0filled the square, erupting in cheers when the tree&#8217;s lights were turned on shortly before 8 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A giant Christmas tree adorned with red and gold baubles stands in the occupied West Bank city of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-54036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}