When COVID-19 was raging and both Israel and the West Bank were closed to tourists, Adi Bannourah wondered whether his two small olivewood factory/workshops would survive. Although the situation was grim, tourists eventually returned, and they were eager to buy Bannourah’s hand-carved Jesus and Mary figures and Nativity scenes.
That 2022-2023 uptick in pilgrimages breathed new life into local Christian businesses and the Holy Land’s struggling Christian communities, whose numbers have dwindled dramatically in recent years. Today, Christians make up just over 2% of the Israeli population — and even less in the Muslim-dominated West Bank.
That hope turned to despair on Oct. 7, the day Hamas infiltrated Israel and perpetrated a massacre, sparking a war spanning more than nine months. Although Israel has opened its borders and is permitting tourists to travel to the West Bank, “people are afraid to visit,” an unemployed Bethlehem-based tour guide who gave his name as Marwan said outside the Church of the Nativity.
From January through May 2023, nearly 2 million tourists visited Israel, according to the Ministry of Tourism. Just 400,000 visited during the same period in 2024, and most were either visiting family in Israel or had come to volunteer.
The near-total absence of Christian pilgrims has meant the closure of virtually all hotels and souvenir shops in Bethlehem and nearby Beit Sahur, the site of Shepherd’s Field. Bannourah, who is Greek Orthodox, has laid off seven of his 11 employees, with more to come.
Standing in his tiny storefront workshop, the air full of sawdust, Bannourah watched as one of his workers carved a figure of Jesus on the cross. The beautiful olivewood figurines that would ordinarily be sold in local gift shops are now only available via export, for purchase online.
“The shelves of the local gift shops, 55-60 of them, are full of merchandise, but there is no one here to buy them. So we are working with our last batch of materials, and then, next month, we won’t work at all,” the artisan said.
Bannourah is one of the 35 members — all but one of them Christian — of the Holy Land Handicraft Cooperative, an organization created in 1981 to help local Palestinian artisans market and sell their products. In addition to sharing a spacious but shuttered gift shop in Beit Sahur, a largely Christian town south of Bethlehem, the cooperative sells the artisans’ work in North America, Europe and beyond.
“One of our most important goals is to keep Christians here in the Holy Land by keeping them working,” said Basma Barham, the cooperative’s director of international relations.
That’s proving to be an uphill battle, Barham acknowledged, because more than 80% of income in the Bethlehem area is derived from tourism.
“Our own souvenir shop and the rest of the souvenir shops have been closed since October. Our only orders come from abroad,” she explained. The situation is so dire that some young Christian couples are emigrating, Barham added.
Johnny Hilal, another member of the cooperative, creates delicate crosses, icons, chalices and other Christian items from nacre, commonly known as mother of pearl, a material that comes from mollusks. His grandfather opened the family’s factory-workshop in 1947.
The number of mother-of-pearl workshops in the Bethlehem areas has dwindled dramatically over the years, although the iridescent items they produce are still in demand, especially in the United States. Hilal’s is one of the few that remain.
“We’re working slowly now with the mother of pearl we have left. If I have to close the factory and stay home, I’ll go crazy,” Hilal said with a wan smile.
The situation isn’t much better in Jerusalem’s Old City, where businesses, including those owned by Christian artisans, are struggling as well.
Hagop Karakashian’s Armenian Orthodox family moved to Jerusalem from Armenia in 1919 at the invitation of British authorities who hired three Armenian artists to replace 48,000 handmade ceramic tiles in the Dome of the Rock. Although the project was canceled due to outrage that the artists were Christian and not Muslim, the artists decided to remain in Jerusalem and open the first Armenian pottery workshop in Jerusalem.
Since the Hamas attack, business at the fourth-generation Jerusalem Pottery store and workshop is down 80%. To make up for some of the shortfall, Karakashian now invites small groups, locals and tourists, to paint a piece of pottery that he puts into the kiln. Armenian pottery is of very high quality and greatly prized.
Although the Christian Quarter where the store is located is very quiet and safe, “most people are afraid to come to Jerusalem and the Old City due to what they see” in news coverage, Karakashian said. “Compared to the people in northern Israel” who are dealing with daily rocket barrages by Hezbollah, “we live in heaven.”
But the volume of local sales “doesn’t cover our huge expenses,” Karakashian said, so online sales are a lifeline.
The Salman Souvenir shop, also in the Christian Quarter, is struggling, too.
“We made it through the first and second intifadas, the 2006 Lebanon war, when there were at least some tourists,” said Lana Salman, whose family has owned the shop for four generations.
But times have been even harder since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and subsequent war with Israel, she said. “It’s like the Corona [COVID-19] times. There are virtually no tourists.”
The one bright spot is the creativity of Lana’s sister Shireen Salman. An interior designer by profession, Shireen is now creating small, light-hearted drawings and paintings of Jerusalem landscapes as well as some whimsical scenes that can be purchased as works of art, tote bags, hanging ornaments, magnets, coasters, aprons, water bottles, bookmarks and other practical items. Much of her work focuses on Christian and Palestinian themes.
“If I could tell Christians around the world one thing, it would be to encourage them to visit the city of Jerusalem to show solidarity with the Christian community here,” Shireen said, seated in the back of the empty store. “I know it’s hard, and that this isn’t the most secure place right now, but we are barely surviving here,” she said, referring not only to her family’s brick-and-mortar shop but to the Holy Land’s shrinking Christian community.
Basma Barham from the Beit Sahur cooperative didn’t mince words.
“I thank God I am a Christian and that I live in the place where Jesus was born. Can you imagine what the Holy Land would look like without Christians living here? How will pilgrims feel if the churches are closed and the Christians are gone?”
By:ncregister
