"This year, without the Christmas tree and lights, there is only darkness," said Friar John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam and who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.
He always went to Bethlehem for Christmas, but this year was especially gloomy, he explained as he looked at a nativity scene in the manger square, where a baby Jesus wrapped in a white cloth remembered the hundreds of children killed in the fighting in Gaza.
There was barbed wire around the site and the gray cobblestones did not reflect cheerful lights or the flashes of color that usually fill the square during Christmas.
"We can't justify taking out a tree and celebrating normally, when some people (in Gaza) don't even have homes to go to," said Ala'a Salameh, one of the owners of the Afteem restaurant, a family-run falafel joint a few steps from the square.
Salameh said Christmas Eve is usually the busiest day of the year. "Usually you can't even find a chair to sit on, we are full from morning to midnight," he recalled. This year there was only one table occupied, by journalists taking a break from the rain.
The restaurant operates at around 15% of normal capacity and cannot cover operating costs, Salameh said. He estimated that even when the war ends, it will take another year for tourism to return to Bethlehem as normal.
The cancellation of the Christmas festivities is a severe blow to the local economy. Tourism brings almost 70% of Bethlehem's income, almost all of it during Christmas.
Many major airlines have cancelled flights to Israel and there are few foreigners visiting. Local authorities indicated that some 70 hotels in Bethlehem have been forced to close, putting thousands of people out of work.
Instead of their traditional musical march through the streets of the town, young scouts stood silent and held flags. Several local students extended a huge silent flag and stood silently.
"Our message every year at Christmas is one of peace and love, but this year it is a message of sadness, pain and anger at the international community for what is happening in the Gaza Strip," the mayor, Hana Haniyeh, said in a message to the crowd.
Some 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,000 injured during the Israeli air and ground offensive against Gaza's ruling Hamas, according to the territory's health authorities, while 85% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced.
The war began with an attack by the Hamas terrorist group on Oct. 7 in southern Israel, in which the militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages.
The fighting in Gaza has also affected life in the West Bank. The fighting has been accompanied in a spike in violence there, and some 300 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.
Since October 7, access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the Israeli-occupied territory has been difficult, with long lines of drivers waiting to pass military checkpoints. Restrictions have also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from leaving the territory to work in Israel.
