If anyone is interested, below, you can find the text for the Bethlehem Mayor’s address to the Palestine Summer Encounter program:
The Mayoral Address to PSE 2005
June 19th 2005
Bethlehem Mayor, Dr. Victor Batarseh
On behalf of our municipal council, it gives me a great pleasure to extend a warm welcome to each and everyone of you and to thank you for the volunteer spirit that has brought you to visit our town of Bethlehem.
In fact, we highly appreciate your participation in the Palestine Summer Encounter, for it reflects your interest and solidarity towards our Palestinian people. I believe it is a good opportunity for you to increase your knowledge about our people and traditions and to see the facts we are living on the ground.
However, allow me to brief you about the circumstances which Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace lives under, today.
Throughout the past years, land confiscation and building of Israeli settlements have increased causing a great loss to our town. The continuous closure of the Palestinian territories including Bethlehem is strangling our movement and economy. However, the most dramatic development today is the construction of the separation wall. The ugly wall, besides isolating our town from the outside world and depriving Bethlehem from any future growth, snakes its way deep inside our municipal borders to encircle Rachel’s Tomb and its surroundings in order to annex them to the so called “Greater Jerusalem Boundaries,” closing the historic and the main entrance of Bethlehem. Today we live in what is similar to a big prison.
As a result, tourism the main source of our income has been seriously affected. Unemployment rates in Bethlehem have accordingly increased to reach 60%, encouraging more emigration amongst its people.
Dear guest, Your presence with us at this difficult time grants us extra courage and will to withstand and to proceed in our struggle for peace. We believe peace is the only solution. However, peace should be based on justice and mutual respect. I should say that the Israeli occupation of our land is the only and the main obstacle in front of peace and we keep yearning for the day when this occupation ends to allow this Holy Land to enjoy lasting and comprehensive peace.
I am confident the Palestine Summer Encounter program will give you the chance to meet our people, to communicate with them, to know them better, their language, their culture, their daily life and their suffering. I hope you will serve as ambassadors to your countries to depict a true and actual picture of our situation and our just cause and I am very grateful for all the help and assistance you are going to render to our people.
In closing, I would like to thank the Holy Land Trust office for their active participation in the community of Bethlehem and for their initiative in organizing this unique program. I am sure their professional staff and well-prepared program will make your stay in Bethlehem an informative, interesting and pleasant experience that would create dialogue and strengthen bonds of friendship between us.
Thank you once again and God bless you.