Bethlehem’s festive lighting engineers have been working for 26 days and have decorated half of Star Street. Their labour is a true act of Christmas charity: they have not been paid for four months because of the Western freeze on Palestinian aid after Hamas’s election victory this year.

But it will take more than the 8,000 metres of cable being strung up by Samaan Shaheen, a Christian city engineer, and his Muslim colleague Khalil to cheer up the birthplace of Christianity.

British church leaders will arrive in Bethlehem to offer some support to the troubled city today.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the Rev David Coffey, the Moderator of the Free Churches, and Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, Primate of the Armenian Church of Great Britain, will make the long walk from the Israeli Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint to Manger Square. Their visit was welcomed by Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who said that it was a reminder “to us, to the Israelis and the Palestinians, and to the world, that the pilgrims’ path of hope and love must remain open”.

In his Christmas message Archbishop Sabbah said: “Bethlehem is meant to be the city of peace. Unfortunately, it is now just the contrary — a city of conflict and death.”

Bethlehem is sunk in gloom: sealed off from Jerusalem by Israel’s wall, its tourism crippled by six years of intifada and war and by Western sanctions against the Islamist Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Politics even infest Christmas.

Khalil and Samaan, who has been erecting lights for 23 years, joke that yellow is the only safe colour left for the Nativity lights this year: red would be too Popular Front and green too Hamas, as the Islamist faction endures an uneasy truce with Fatah. But why, Khalil wonders, can Bethlehem afford to beautify itself at £2.50 per metre of festive lights — bought or donated from Nazareth — when their salaries have gone unpaid since late summer? “How do you think it makes me feel? I don’t have half a shekel and I have a sick son who needs dialysis that I can’t afford,” he says.

The answer, Bethlehem’s Christian and Muslim councillors sigh in unison, is that private and corporate donors are happy to contribute in cash or kind for the festivities, but the municipality’s running costs and £52,000 monthly salary bill are paid through taxes and other revenues.

These have dried up because of the economic crisis begun by the Israeli-Palestinian violence, and compounded by the Western boycott on the Palestinian Authority. “We are isolated, anyone can see that,” says Saleh Shoukeh, one of Bethlehem’s five Hamas councillors.

“Nevertheless we want to show the world that we are united here in this city, Christian and Muslim, and that the City of Bethlehem should be augmented with decorations on an international holiday.” The upshot was that local donors were asked to contribute, and came forward.The Hamas-led Government — as eager as its Arafat-led predecessor to be seen to be supporting Palestinian Christians — has also promised tens of thousands of pounds for decorations.

Bethlehem had a majority of Christians until the late 1970s, but that is now down to 45 per cent of the city’s 30,000 population, and 20 per cent in the wider district, said Anton Salman, a Christian council member with Fatah. Before the outbreak of the intifada in 2000, Bethlehem drew more than 1.2 million pilgrims a year; only a tenth of that number come now.

Back on the decoration round, Samaan gets on well with his Muslim colleague, but as elsewhere in the region there is unease among Christians about being caught between vastly more numerous — and well-armed — enemies.

The two Bethlehem engineers will reach the square shortly before Christmas Eve, to fit the last of the sparkling decorations.

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