Usually full of tourists, Manger Square is now sad and empty, and a nativity baby Jesus lies nearby in rubble
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At Bethlehem’s Lutheran Evangelical church, the nativity scene looks very different this Christmas. Instead of a cot in a hay-filled manger, the baby doll has been wrapped in the famous black and white keffiyeh associated with Palestine, and lies among broken breeze blocks and paving slabs.
Christmas celebrations have been cancelled across the Holy Land this year as the region mourns the Palestinians – now more than 20,000, according to Hamas – killed in the Gaza Strip. Munther Isaac, the pastor of the Lutheran church, said he wanted to send the world a message with this year’s nativity scene. “This is the reality of Christmas for Palestinian children,” he said. “If Jesus was born today, he’d be born under the rubble of Gaza.”
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