{"id":59102,"date":"2025-12-12T12:36:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/59102\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:36:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T12:36:23","slug":"palestinians-bethlehem-christmas-festivities-dimmed-by-gaza-war-emigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/59102\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinians’ Bethlehem Christmas Festivities Dimmed by Gaza War, Emigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a rainy Saturday night, thousands of people gathered outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site where Mary is believed to have given birth to Jesus. After speeches, prayer and song, including one titled \u201cPeace is Born,\u201d the crowd counted down in Arabic from 10 to zero, then cheered as the lights of the city\u2019s Christmas tree were switched on and lasers projected blue rays across the packed square.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere where the lights of the nativity first shone, we gather once again to proclaim hope,\u201d Bethlehem Mayor Maher Nicola Canawati<\/a> said at the Dec. 6 event. \u201cDespite years of pandemic, war and hardship, we light this tree to declare that light is stronger than darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a rainy Saturday night, thousands of people gathered outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,5527,5974,13333,456,5061,24324,32274,26302,7803,453,32275,5144],"class_list":["post-59102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-christmas","tag-cities","tag-dispatch","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-muslim","tag-palestinian-territories","tag-tourism","tag-war","tag-weekend-edition","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59102","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=59102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}