Meanwhile, an Israeli-built wall partially encircles Bethlehem, cutting it off from Jerusalem and stifling homebuilding and urban growth. Israel says the wall is a necessary security measure to ...

The cave’s roof is a geographical map of Gaza. Its shape, together with a depiction of an explosion, form a star, inspired by the Star of Bethlehem ... the West Bank and Jerusalem are enduring ...

even as the ongoing conflict with Israel disfigured the biblical landscape surrounding Bethlehem. Though he could live and work elsewhere, he said he feels a call of duty to stay and minister to ...

“If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born in Gaza under the rubble,” Munther Isaac, the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, told NBC News Sunday.

“This war stopped everything.” Church leaders in Jerusalem and the Bethlehem city council took the decision last month to forego “any unnecessarily festive” Christmas celebrations in ...

Israel’s Gaza war has shut down Bethlehem and East Jerusalem. Churchmen, merchants, restaurant and hotel owners had hoped for a vibrant holiday season which stretches from early December until ...

as Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war. The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs ...

Bethlehem lies 10 kilometres south of the city of Jerusalem, in the fertile limestone hill country of the Holy Land. Since at least the 2nd century AD people have believed that the place where the ...