Gloom Hovers Over Bethlehem Christmas

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- Thousands of people joined by marching bands, clergymen in magenta skullcaps and children dressed as Santa Claus celebrated Christmas Eve in the center of Bethlehem Sunday, doing their best to dispel the gloom hovering over Jesus' traditional birthplace.

Most were local residents or Christian Arabs from neighboring Israel with a sprinkling of foreign tourists.

"It hasn't really set in that I am here in Bethlehem where everything happened so many thousand years ago," said an overwhelmed Matt Lafontaine, a 21-year-old university student from Plymouth, Minnesota. "It's really exciting. It's just starting to set in. It's surreal."

In an annual tradition, Bethlehem's residents enacted Christmas rituals that seem out of place in the Middle East. Palestinian scouts marched through the streets, some wearing kilts and pompom-topped berets, playing drums and bagpipes. They passed inflatable red-suited Santas, looking forlorn in the West Bank sunshine.

Other scenes of this Bethlehem Christmas, however, could be found nowhere else. To get to town, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the Roman Catholic Church's highest official in the Holy Land, rode in his motorcade through a huge steel gate in the Israeli separation barrier that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem.

Israel says it built the barrier to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli population centers. Palestinians view the structure, which dips into parts of the West Bank, as a land grab.

The robed clergyman was led into Palestinian-controlled territory by a formal escort of five Israeli policemen mounted on horses. Two Israeli Border Police troops closed the gate behind him.

In his homily at midnight Mass in Bethlehem, Sabbah appealed to Palestinians to halt their recent "fratricidal struggles" and called for an end to Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed as well.

"The conflict here has lasted too long," he said. "It is high time that the leaders who have our destinies in their hands in this land _ specifically, the Palestinian and Israeli leaders as well as those of the international community _ it is time for all of them to take new measures that will bring an end to the long phase of death in our history and lead us into a new phase in the history of this Holy Land."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Muslim, joined the celebrations, expressing hope that his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday would lead to a peace breakthrough.

"I congratulate our people, especially our Christian brothers, not only here but all around the world for Christmas and the New Year, God bless us," he said. He called his meeting with Olmert "a good start."

Sabbah, wearing a flowing gold and burgundy robe, led a procession into St. Catherine's Church, adjacent to the traditional birthplace of Jesus for midnight Mass.