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Filing past a 16-meter (52-ft) Christmas tree in Manger Square , visitors from all over the world made a Christmas Eve pilgrimage to Bethlehem , the town revered as the birthplace of Jesus .
The Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is enjoying its busiest Christmas in years, with hotels nearly fully booked and the security situation relatively calm.
Lines of pilgrims squeezed through a narrow sandstone entrance to the Church of the Nativity to visit the grotto where Christian faithful believe Jesus was born.
“This place is wonderful. I feel like the real Christmas (is celebrated) here,” said Joseph Ahlan , a pilgrim from Malaysia .
Maria Moeva
, a visitor from Bulgaria , said she could feel “all the passion of the people who are here to celebrate the birth of Christ .”
The acting Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem , Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa , led an annual procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and will later celebrate Midnight Mass in the Church of the Nativity , originally built in the 4th century.
In Manger Square , visitors were entertained by choirs singing carols , bagpipe players, and a Palestinian scouts’ marching band.
While the security situation has eased since a wave of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks in 2015 , Israeli roadblocks and a six-meter Israeli-built concrete separation barrier that snakes around the town are still part of the Bethlehem vista.
Palestinians see the barrier as a land grab, in territory they are seeking as part of a state of their own. Israel , which captured the West Bank in a 1967 war , says the fences and walls it has erected help prevent Palestinian attacks.
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