CBNNews.com - Approximately 65,000 tourists are expected to visit Bethlehem this Christmas season.
One of the main attractions besides being the birthplace of our Lord Jesus is a four-story Christmas tree.
Click on the media player for a Newswatch clip on the site.
Locals lit the tree during a ceremony held in Manger Square, which faces the Church of the Nativity.
Tourists can also stroll through streets under tinsel and lights shaped like bells.
This year, Bethlehem is expected to host the largest amount of tourists in seven years.
The trend reflects an overall increase of tourism to the holy town.
From January to October of this year, 340,000 tourists visited Bethlehem from Israel. Israel's Tourism Ministry reports that this dwarfs last year's tally, which registered 200,000 making the trip to the Christ's birthplace.
In all, 2.3 million tourists are expected to visit Israel this year, which is second only to 2000, when 2.7 traveled to the Holy Land.
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By Gary Lane
Watch Low Ban CBNNews.com - BETHLEHEM - Each day, children around the world make their way to school. Many are eager to learn how to read and write and become productive members of their societies.
In contrast, in the Palestinian territories, recent kindergarten graduates - most no more than 5 years old - were demonstrating what they had been taught.
The children, dressed in battle fatigues and carrying toy automatic rifles, chanted their replies to the instructor:
"What is your path?" They were asked. "Jihad," they answered. "What is your most lofty aspiration?" "Death for the sake of allah," they replied.
Because of the aggressive spread of extremist Islamic ideas like this, thousands of Palestinian Christians have fled Palestinian-controlled areas like Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ and was once a Christian city. But today, Christians are only about 10 to 15 percent of the population here. Some observers say that if the mass exodus continues, within another generation it could become a city of Christian holy sites without any Christian residents.
Justice Weiner of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs believes that is happening. He has spent years investigating persecution and the exodus of Christians ...   more »