Bethlehem, a short 15 minute drive from Jerusalem, is a city penned in by the occupation.  Entering the city, you pass through a checkpoint and giant gate in the separation barrier, sometimes called the apartheid wall, a true wall here with concrete slabs rising 30 feet tall topped by barbed wire.  Bethlehem is completely surrounded on all four sides by this barrier, and a ring of Israeli settlements; ingress/egress to the city in completely controlled at checkpoints where as few as 1% of Bethlehem’s population of Palestinian Christians and Muslims get permits to leave.  Ironically, those that do get permits face excruciatingly long and unnecessary waits traveling through checkpoints. Thus, Bethlehemites, a population that used to work, shop, and worship in Jerusalem is cut off,  from the outside world, ghettoizing the population and leaving the economy in shambles.  Even worse, Bethlehem has lost 85% of its land, mostly agricultural land, to Israeli confiscation and settlements.  And the ring is getting tighter: Israeli settlements scattered on hilltops to the east of the Bethlehem are expanding with the building of the “Lieberman Road,” a settler bypass road named after right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Leiberman who lives in one of these settlements.  Few industries remain; tourism, the lifeblood of the  local economy, though still present has dwindled with the deliberate discouragement of the Iaraeli government, who characterize the area as “dangerous” due to Palestinian control.   Tourist traffic is comparatively low, and vendors bark dirt-cheap prices on olivewood carvings and keffiiyehs with persistence, and perhaps a reserved  desperation,  near the bullet-scarred stone walls of the ancient Church of the Nativity, the main attraction in Bethlehem.   With few jobs and little opportunity, many Bethlehemites are choosing to emigrate, particularly the rapidly shrinking Christian population.  For more on Bethlehem, please see a recent National Geographic cover story on the Middle East’s disappearing Christian population.