Nothing in this place is as simple as it seems. Bethlehem, “بيت لحم”, “בת להמ” You need to use all three names because all three mean something different. Bethlehem is where the Pope is going to visit in about a week and a half. It’s the place where western Christians say that Jesus was born, and that’s mostly what it means.

Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity would be visible just over the rise, I believe.
The Palestinian city is بيت لحم, a town of something like 30,000 people, on the border of Israel. This is the term used by Eastern Christians, as well as Muslims. It is the place where Jesus was born, but it also means “house of meat.”

بيت لحم- A refugee camp should be just over the rise.
The city on the border of Israel is בית לחם, which is on the other side of the wall and is 70% Muslim, 30% Christian. It has two daughter cities, Beit Jala and Beit Satur, which hold an additional 20,000 people. It is roughly 0% Jewish, and it is really the first thing on the south side of the border of municipal Jerusalem. To the south of it lies Hebron. The name literally means “House of Bread.”

בית לחם, at the edge of Jerusalem
For those who are interested, the pronunciation of those names are all roughly similar (Arabic: Bayt Lehem, Hebrew: Bet Lahm). Which should confuse you (as it did me) because the two semitic languages have a word with the same sound with two oppositional meanings. Perhaps this is most appropriate though, since it is clear that all three names mean something very different. I’ve found (and told on at least a few occasions) that this is remarkably typical of the region. Two or three groups look at the same exact thing and see remarkably different things. First, a map of the area.

Photo Credit: Google Maps
These pictures were taken from Tantur,

The front entrance of Tantur, where we've had classes the past two days.
an ecumenical Christian compound built just opposite Bethlehem. To one side of Bethlehem, we have the dauther city of Bayt Satur,

Bayt Satur, at center-left, with the grove of dark green trees. This is the location of "shepherds field," where the angels heralded the birth of Christ.
In addition to the sheperds’ field, Bayt Sahur is home to about 12,000 Arabs, 80% Christian, 20% Muslim. To the other side there is the daughter city of Bayt Jala.

Bayt Jala, on the left side of the hill.
Bayt Jala is home to about an additional 12,000 Arabs. On the Israeli side of the wall, we have Har Homa

Har Homa, on a hillside dominating Bayt Satur
which is a neighborhood of Jerusalem founded in the 1990s and

A view of Gilo, the buildings behind the trees.
Gilo, a neighborhood of Jerusalem founded after the 1967 war, still unrecognized by most of the international community. Even before our guide talked about what was going on in the area, I understood from my earlier tour of the old city what would be said about the Har Homa; It was a settlement. Had I seen Gilo, I likely would have guessed the same thing about it. The projection of power is just too clear a factor in the region. Every act is political.
The wall, of course dominates ones entire view of the area. The eyes are positively attracted to it. The wall, or separation barrier as it is known to Israelis, is about 30 feet high, with a checkpoint in Bethlehem, as you can see in the second picture.

A closer view of the wall. Note the street sign (roughly 2m) for height comparisons.
Gerrymandered on the Israeli side of the wall is the tomb of Rachel. You can see the wall dip in and dip back out in the 4th photo, and that is where the tomb is located. The wall, of course, was constructed in response to the second Intifadah. The Israelis had enough of the killing and did something widely recognized as drastic – they built the wall. That isn’t to say that the building of the wall was completely “fair.” The construction of the separation barrier = the wall allowed Israel to move the boundary up perhaps 300 meters – not an insignificant amount in a region where land is so important. The wall and these settlements, as well as a score of others, are designed to create a Jewish perimeter of Jerusalem, making sure that it never again falls exclusively under Arab control. Or it’s a security measure that needed to be pushed up as far as possible for some reason.
The stories told here are two different stories.
That’s why I’m here and that’s why it’s important to investigate for myself. The pictures I post aren’t insignificant either. There seems to be a dearth of honest reporting about the mundane in this area, the stuff that lives are made of. It’s only exciting to the media if someone dies and right now it seems like the fighting isn’t the killing kind, but that doesn’t mean that the battle is less pitched.
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