Inns near empty now in Jesus' birthplace

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From combined dispatches

There's plenty of room at the inn this year.

Bethlehem's inns, which had no vacancies for the birth of Jesus about 2,000 years ago, are largely empty this Christmas season, according to a United Nations report that found tourism to the West Bank town has fallen 92 percent in the past four years.

The cycle of violence that began in September 2000 and the 78 Israeli-built barriers surrounding Bethlehem have prompted the monthly average of tourist visits to drop to 7,249 this year from 91,726 in 2000, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations' special envoy to the Middle East.

"Bethlehem has become an isolated town, with boarded-up shops and abandoned development projects," the report said.

Without a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, "the future for Bethlehem looks bleak," the study concluded.

Still, several thousand pilgrims celebrated Christmas Eve in Bethlehem yesterday, welcoming the new thaw in Israeli-Palestinian relations and voicing hope for peace in the Middle East.

While the crowds were larger than in recent years, the numbers were far smaller than during the boom period of the 1990s, when tens of thousands of people would flood into the West Bank town for Christmas. Many of yesterday's visitors were local Palestinians, and in a cold, bitter rain, shopkeepers lamented that business remained in the doldrums.

Bethlehem, with almost 61,000 residents, was occupied by Israeli forces from 1967 until the Palestinian Authority took control in 1995. The Israeli army entered Bethlehem again in 2000 amid Palestinian unrest and set up barriers along most roads in and out of the town before withdrawing last year.

The Israeli military has eased restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip until Jan. 19, so Christians can celebrate in Bethlehem, according to a government statement. The period includes Christmas rituals for Orthodox and Armenian Christians in January.