During a recent visit, the expansive lobby of the 222-room Bethlehem Hotel was silent. “It ordinarily gets so crowded that there’s little room to move.”Inside the Bethlehem Hotel, normally teeming with visitors during the Christmas season, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Dec 19, 2020. Until the pandemic, the tourism industry in the West Bank, which relies heavily on the Christmastime business in Bethlehem, was anticipating its best year in two decades. The audience for the annual scouts parade, in which dozens of boys and girls march through Bethlehem on Christmas Eve playing Palestinian anthems and Christmas songs, will be limited to local residents. Now Bethlehem, like all Palestinian cities in the West Bank, is predominantly Muslim.

Source: bd News24 December 24, 2020 08:15 UTC