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Calls for peace resonated in Bethlehem yesterday as a lull in violence spurred the biggest influx of Christmas pilgrims for years to the town where Christians believe Jesus was born.

Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in messages they were committed to peacemaking in 2006. In Rome, Pope Benedict offered a special prayer for peace in the Holy Land.

In Bethlehem, an intermittent battleground in the five-year-old Palestinian uprising, Vatican envoy Michel Sabbah said there was a real opportunity to grasp, with both Israelis and Palestinians due to hold elections early next year.

"A new Israeli and Palestinian political landscape is taking shape," said the Latin Patriarch Sabbah, a Palestinian.

"Leaving all violence, all vengeance, freeing political prisoners and putting the past behind can create a new land in which we can assure security for Israelis ... and give Palestinians liberty and an end to occupation," he said.

Taking advantage of a truce that Palestinian militants have said they will follow to the end of the year, thousands of pilgrims and tourists came to Bethlehem.

Braving gusts of icy rain, they dashed from tour buses to the candle-lit warmth of the grotto in the Church of the Nativity, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus. Outside, monks and pilgrims sang hymns.

Bethlehem is dependent on tourism and the town's mayor said he was expecting 30,000 visitors on Saturday and yesterday, far more than in any year since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

Souvenir sellers were out in force, hawking olivewood carvings, rosaries and black and white keffiyeh Arab headdresses. Some did a good trade in umbrellas.

"People start to get a sense of security in this town," said Bethlehem resident Elias Deik. "It is good for our economy."

Israel's army has eased restrictions to allow foreigners, as well as Israeli and Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Gaza, to visit the town. But for the first time, pilgrims taking the road from Jerusalem have to pass through an iron gateway in an eight-meter-high concrete wall since Israeli completed a section of its West Bank barrier outside Bethlehem. Israel erected the barrier with the avowed aim of stopping Palestinian suicide bombers.

(China Daily December 26, 2005)