7th October
Bethlehem.
I had a day off today, but in the evening went to a concert given in the Bethlehem International Centre by some of the students. All this week in the Bethlehem branch there have been workshops with visiting Spanish musicians on Spanish repertoire - Turina, Albeniz, et al., and this was the final concert. The students did very well considering they had the music only a week, but if they had had it earlier they could all have done a better job, so in some ways it was a missed opportunity.
Afterwards I walked home through the Muslim end of town. After the sun has set and everyone has eaten, the atmosphere there is very excitable. But this is unfortunately not the case in many areas of Bethlehem. For obvious reasons, Bethlehem’s economy is based on tourism and since recent years this has been cut back a lot. The wall affects Bethlehem a great deal – it is very close to the town, and cuts it off completely from Jerusalem, its previous main trading partner. No West Bank produce is allowed through the checkpoint into Jerusalem, so the Bethlehem farmers now have a very small consumer base. This coupled with the dramatic decrease in tourism since the troubles came to head means that Bethlehem is a town that has a slightly insular feel. There are many restaurants and bars intended to cater for visitors that stand empty for most of the day. This is, of course, a thing that is seen in various places across the West Bank, but in Bethlehem it is very tangible.
