Noor Awad, a tour guide in Bethlehem, West Bank on Oct. 18, 2025.

Late one recent afternoon, Noor Awad sat inside a shop in Bethlehem playing cards. A short walk away, the Church of the Nativity loomed over the horizon. He knows it well – the chest-height stone entryway, designed centuries ago to keep out pack animals; the disparate Christian denominations that oversee its different chapels; the location, in a cave down a steep set of stairs, of the manger on which the infant Christ is said to have been laid.

Mr. Awad is a tour guide, but two years of war between Israel and Hamas have left few tourists to guide. In Bethlehem, a good day once brought more than 220 busloads.

Today, “maximum five,” Mr. Awad said. “There is no tourism, actually.”

Few industries in Israel have paid a heav

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