For the past two Christmases, most businesses in the traditional birthplace of Jesus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were shuttered and eerily empty.

But on Saturday evening, crowds watched a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Manger Square and restaurants bustled with families and – a hopeful change in the Palestinian city that’s been reeling since war broke out in Gaza.

“It’s not like it was before the war,” 30-year-old restaurant owner John Juka said. “But it’s like life is coming back again.”

Tourism and religious pilgrims have long been a prime economic engine for Bethlehem. Around 80% of the Muslim-majority city’s residents live off it, according to the local government.

Those earnings ripple out to communities across the West Bank, a territory long marked by economic precarit

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