By JACK JEF­FERY | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

BETH­LE­HEM, West Bank (AP) — The bib­li­cal town of Beth­le­hem is gear­ing up for its sec­ond straight Christ­mas Eve hit by the coro­n­avirus -- with small crowds and gray, gloomy weath­er damp­en­ing cel­e­bra­tions Fri­day in the tra­di­tion­al birth­place of Je­sus.

A ban on near­ly all in­com­ing air traf­fic by Is­rael -- the main en­try point for for­eign vis­i­tors head­ing to the oc­cu­pied West Bank -- kept in­ter­na­tion­al tourists away for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year. The ban is meant to slow the spread of the high­ly con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant, which has shak­en Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions around the world.

In­stead, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were count­ing on the Holy Land’s small Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty to lift spir­its.

Beth­le­hem’s may­or, An­ton Salman, said the town was op­ti­mistic that 2021 would be bet­ter than last year’s Christ­mas, when even lo­cal res­i­dents stayed home due to lock­down re­stric­tions. Beth­le­hem planned a re­turn of its tra­di­tion­al march­ing band pa­rades and street cel­e­bra­tions.

“Last year, our fes­ti­val was vir­tu­al, but this year it will be face to face with pop­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion,” Salman said.

Po­lice erect­ed bar­ri­cades ear­ly Fri­day as scout bands marched through Manger Square bang­ing drums and hold­ing flags ahead of the ex­pect­ed ar­rival from Jerusalem of Latin Pa­tri­arch Pier­bat­tista Piz­z­a­bal­la, the top Ro­man Catholic cler­gy­man in the Holy Land.

Piz­z­a­bal­la was sched­uled to cel­e­brate Mid­night Mass at the near­by Church of the Na­tiv­i­ty — which hous­es the grot­to where Chris­tians be­lieve Je­sus was born.

By mid­day, sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple, near­ly all of them Pales­tini­ans, milled about be­hind the bar­ri­cades to cel­e­brate the oc­ca­sion.

Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, Beth­le­hem would host thou­sands of Chris­t­ian pil­grims from around the world, bring­ing a strong dose of hol­i­day spir­it to the town and a huge jolt to the lo­cal econ­o­my. The loss of in­ter­na­tion­al tourism, the lifeblood of Beth­le­hem’s econ­o­my, has hit ho­tels, restau­rants and gift shops es­pe­cial­ly hard.

“Un­der nor­mal con­di­tions for this time of year, I usu­al­ly have a 20-me­ter queue out­side,” said Adil Abu Nayaf, own­er of an emp­ty food stall in Manger Square.

Those who at­tend­ed tried to make the best of a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. The Holy Land is home to over 200,000 Chris­tians, a small but tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty that makes up an es­ti­mat­ed 1% to 2% of the pop­u­la­tion in Is­rael and the oc­cu­pied West Bank. There are al­so thou­sands of for­eign la­bor­ers and African mi­grants, as well as diplo­mats and jour­nal­ists.

Bil­ly Stu­art, an em­ploy­ee at the British Con­sulate in Jerusalem, said his ex­pe­ri­ence in Beth­le­hem was up­lift­ing, de­spite the small­er-than-hoped-for crowds.

“The pa­rade is amaz­ing, and I did not re­al­ize there were so many Pales­tin­ian bag pipers,” he said.